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UNCLE GEdRGE. 



When Dreams 
Came True 

anb ®tljpr S'tnma 


BY 

WILLIAM HAMILTON JOHNSTON 

A Member of the Tennessee* knnual Con- 
ference of the M. E. Church, South 






Nashville, Tenn.; Dallas, Tex. 
PUBLISHING HOUSE OF THE M. E. CHURCH, SOUTH 
Smith & Lamar. Agents 





Copyright, 1911 

BY 

Smith & Lamar 




^ 0 . 1 ^ 

©CI.A3051i;9 


PROF. W. R. WEBB 

(Dear “Old Sawney”) 

whose bow abides in strength, even 
though the gray ashes of consumed 
years fall thick on temple and brow, 
this book is affectionately dedicated by 
The Author. 


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CONTENTS. 


Page. 

When Dreams Came True 7 

A Foot Race for a Baby 17 

Salt-Making Time 24 

Crossing the Swollen Stream 31 

The Squirrel Hunt 41 

The Circuit Rider’s First Circuit 49 

A Flood of Buttermilk 59 

When Billy Lost His Head 65 

PiNEY ON A Rampage 75 

Old Shiney, the Giant Trout 81 

The Beginning of the Big Flat Revival 88 

Bandy’s Bad Break 97 

The Fight at Rainbow Falls 103 

An Effective Cure; or, Nearly a Tragedy iii 

A Terrible Accusation 117 

A Strange Place for an Overcoat : 124 

Brother Bayless’s First Sermon 130 

When Uncle Mose Was Challenged 138 

How Old Ephraim Was Cured of the Fits 147 

When the Elder Came to Roaring Oak 157 

Michael O’Harrity’s Toothache 167 

The Hero of the Wreck 173 

That Treasury Job 184 


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WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE 


WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 
DELIGHTFUL company of tourists from 



the. Far East were journeying south on a 
Southern Pacific Pullman in Northern California. 
The two heavy engines in front had been labor- 
ing hard all day, and had drawn the train up into 
the Siskiyou Mountains less than one hundred 
miles. Old Shasta Mountain, snow-clad from 
summit to base, had appeared in sight about three 
o’clock, and its fifteen thousand feet of weird 
ghostliness had excited exclamation after excla- 
mation of wonder and awe. In the party men- 
tioned there were Mrs. Allison, her two charm- 
ing daughters,. Misses Sue and Mary, her son 
Albert, a fine young fellow of twenty, and Uncle 
George, Mrs. Allison’s bachelor brother of thirty- 
five. Of distinguished bearing, tall and handsome, 
bright, witty, and finely educated. Uncle George 
was easily the most beloved gentleman of all his 
long list of acquaintances. Why he was a bachelor 
was an insoluble mystery to all his friends, and 
many speculations had been indulged in first and 


( 7 ) 


8 


WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


last concerning it. One said that he had never 
loved any one better than himself ; another, that 
his sweetheart had died in young girlhood soon 
after their meeting; another, that he was wait- 
ing to make his fortune. Still others had un- 
derstood that his ardent attachment for a certain 
young woman had not been reciprocated, and he 
had voluntarily condemned himself to bachelor- 
hood for life, etc. Some one else had suggested 
that deep in Uncle George’s soul there was a se- 
cret that some day would be given to the world. 

On this day in question the Pullman was not 
crowded. There was a hollow-cheeked woman 
with a little wizened, crying baby in the back 
section, both ill and suffering; an old gentleman 
on crutches, to whom Albert had already brought 
in water five times ; a young and very affectionate 
couple, consisting of a proud-looking boy of 
twenty-two and a rosy-cheeked lass of eighteen, 
that everybody knew were a bride and groom on 
their bridal tour. And — O yes, that sweet-faced, 
beautiful lady in the blue silk dress that just a 
while ago held the sick baby while the mother 
took a little nap on a pillow which the porter 
brought. This lady occupied the section next be- 
hind Mrs. Allison. These were all. 

‘‘Uncle George, tell us a story,” said Sue. “Tell 
us a love story, one that is true and real, won’t 
you?” 


WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


9 


Now, if there was one thing Uncle George 
could do better than another, it was telling a good 
story ; and when he began, other conversation in- 
stinctively ceased, eyes were drawn to him, and 
everybody in the neighborhood listened. 

So, with his back the way the train was going, 
facing all the occupants o'l^ the car, after the 
crippled man had slipped to the end of his seat, 
the little sick mother had moved one section near- 
er, and that lovely young woman in the blue silk 
had settled herself also to listen, Uncle George 
began this very unusual story : 

“About fifteen years ago one afternoon late I 
was riding my horse, 'Breakers," through a dense 
woodland where the trees were so thick as to 
make twilight almost out of noonday. The road- 
way was broad and oval, as smooth as a floor, and 
the afternoon air came in refreshing breezes la- 
den with the perfume of wild flowers and the 
sweet odors of the woods. ‘Old Break," as I 
called my horse, was cantering gracefully along, 
seemingly enjoying the ride as much as 1. Mile 
after mile was laid behind us, and the delicious 
sense of peace and deep restfulness thrilled me 
through and through. In all my life before such 
a charming ride had never been my privilege. 
Soon I became aware that another horseman had 
turned into the road a short distance ahead, going 
the same way as I. A glance revealed the fact 


lo WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


that it was a slight young girl riding with the 
utmost grace a noble bay horse and traveling 
about as fast as 1. As I came nearer (for some- 
how Breakers had decided that he wanted some 
company along that fragrant road) I saw that she 
''vas dressed in a lovely dark blue riding habit, 
skirt and basque, vJliile the neatest straw hat I 
ever saw rested on her silken yellow tresses. 
When I caught up with her (the whole width of 
the road between us) and had bowed, I got the 
first glance at her face, which was altogether a 
face of the most exquisitely refined and chaste 
beauty it had ever been my privilege to see. 

“Describe it? O, I can't do that! Yes, of 
course her eyes were blue and her complexion as 
white and clear as could be, and somehow grace 
had taken up a permanent abode on her brow and 
dwelt there all unknown to her, and she had the 
bearing of a princess. Hers was not the imita- 
tion or semblance of beauty that had to be fixed 
up and put on ; it was beauty itself, that kind 
about which artists rave and poets sing and 
sculptors go wild. And a wonderful thing about 
it all was that she was as sensible and well- 
balanced as she was beautiful. She returned my 
salutation with gracious acceptance, and to a few 
other polite words I uttered returned answers of 
the utmost propriety. 

“We rode together for miles, ‘Break’ was not 


WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. n 


content with having the width of the road be- 
tween him and the other horse. He had managed 
to close np that gap, had touched noses, looked 
deeply into the other's eyes, and they were now 
cantering along together, the very best friends in 
the world. 

“Our conversation grew apace — at first shy 
and reserved, but a little later more and more 
friendly — until finally it was marvelous how much 
interest I was taking in every word that fell from 
her lovely lips. When she would look up and 
smile at something, I would say it seemed that 
heaven was just ahead, and already the music and 
incense of that holy place were surrounding us 
both. I really remember but one thing she said, 
and that was when a most gorgeous butterfly flit- 
ted across our path. I remarked, ‘What a beau- 
tiful insect!’ and she replied: ‘Yes; its purpose 
in life is but to be beautiful, to flutter, and to 
die.' And so on and on we rode down that sweet 
aisle of the woods together, and after one hour 
I was as much in love with that lovely young girl 
as I ever expect to be in this life. In fact," said 
Uncle George solemnly as he grew more serious, 
“if ever again I meet one I can love like that or 
see that girl on earth. Uncle George will be trying 
his best to get married. 

“Well, I never have spent such an afternoon 
either before or since, and no one knows how my 


12 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


heart has yearned for that little stranger. By 
and by, while we were at our friendliest and the 
horses had been seeing how close together they 
could trot, I noticed that we were getting just a 
tiny bit farther apart. It was almost indistin- 
guishable, but nevertheless we were not so close 
together. After a minute or two more, I noticed 
that we were several feet apart. I pulled my 
bridle rein in her direction, and my horse sought 
to close up the distance between us, but somehow 
could not. I tried to guide him closer to her 
again, but again did not succeed. I looked down 
to the ground (for we were by this time ten feet 
apart) and saw what was wrong. The road had 
divided into two, and the point of division was 
almost imperceptible. Gradually, because of this 
unknown but sure division, we had been getting 
farther and farther apart. There was no way of 
crossing over, either. The thing dividing us was 
impassable somehow, and the only way for me to 
get with her again was to turn, gallop two hun- 
dred yards back, and return in the other road. I 
was annoyed, worried, and a little twinge of fear 
shot through my heart. Darkness was coming 
on ; objects were not so distinct now as before. 
Said I : ‘Wait ! I will be with you again in a mo- 
ment.’ I turned my horse and galloped back. 
When I reached the other road and looked toward 
the young woman, I saw, to my surprise and sor- 


WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 13 


row, that she had not waited. She had kept going 
at the same gait as when I left her, and was fully 
four hundred yards away. I called loudly to her : 
‘Wait! I am coming!’ But all I got from her 
was a half turn of the head. She did not quicken 
her horse’s speed and run away from me, but to 
save my life I could not catch her. The road 
was no longer smooth, my horse had to pick his 
way along, and the distance between us continued 
to widen. ‘Wait for me, please!’ I called again 
as darkness settled down upon us both. ‘Wait I 
wait ! wait !’ in despairing tones I called again and 
again, and then — I waked up ! My eyes were full 
of tears, and I called several times after waking; 
‘Wait, wait; I am coming!’ But behold, it was 
all a dream.” 

All the party were visibly affected by the earnest 
reality Uncle George put into his story. The 
crippled man drew a long sigh, the sick lady 
settled back sad and lonely ; but of all the remark- 
able things was the effect the story or something 
seemed to have on the beautiful lady in the blue 
silk just behind them. Uncle George had noticed 
something strangely familiar about her; and as 
he was describing the young girl’s face in his 
awkward manlike manner, he seemed to be read- 
ing some of the lines and looks from off her 
countenance. When he had concluded the story, 
her face was deadly pale, she had dropped back 


14 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


into her seat, and her eyes were closed. Her 
mouth was slightly open, and one hand with the 
tightest grasp was holding a delicate lace hand- 
kerchief to her heart. 

Alarmed and yet thrilled by the presence of 
some impending denouement, and wondering at 
the not entirely strange feeling in his bosom. 
Uncle George secured a glass of ice water, mois- 
tened the face and lips of the lady in blue, spoke 
tenderly and gently to her, picked up one of her 
little white hands, and, carressing it lovingly, 
raised it to his lips just as the fair lady opened 
her eyes and smiled into his. What could it all 
mean? Uncle George act thus toward a rank 
stranger? They were all beginning to be quite 
shocked when he said to her : “O Lillie, why did 
you not wait for me?” And she replied : ‘T tried 
to, but somehow it was impossible.” 

It was but a very short time before the utmost 
confidence seemed to be established between 
them, and more and more they talked together 
as old, dear friends. A few more gentle in- 
quiries began to make the mystery clearer to 
each of them, although surprise, amazement, mag- 
ical realization, and supreme satisfaction kept 
them in a state of supernal joy for hours. Ev- 
erybody realized that something wonderful had 
occurred, something too deep and sacred for the 
staring eyes of the public to glut their impious 


WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 15 

curiosity upon. So they were left alone, and 
threaded the mazes of their sweet mystery all by 
themselves. 

The story Uncle George had told was really a 
vivid dream of his young manhood fifteen years 
before while living at the parental mansion near 
Lexington, Ky., and fate never worked a more 
ironical trick than when it kept these two splen- 
’did young people apart for so many years. 

Not five miles away dwelt Lillian Howe, the 
most beautiful little girl in all that favored sec- 
tion, who, on the same night in question, dreamed 
the exact counterpart of this beautiful story, 
which had caused such an effect that of all the 
many suitors that had wooed her, none had ever 
appealed to her. During the recital of Uncle 
George’s dream, recognition had almost been mu- 
tual, a complete understanding of the mystery 
being made possible in a few hours. 

It is needless to say that the Allison party 
straightway was increased by one new member. 
Uncle George had always been as attentive and 
kind as he could be, but now he seemed to be 
ten times more so. The icy gorges of Shasta, 
the hudge redwoods of Yosemite, the plunging, 
roaring surf of the Golden Gate, the solitude and 
overwhelming wonder of the Grand Canyon, the 
impurpled slopes of the Sierra Nevadas heard 
whispers and saw love deepen and grow too holy 


i6 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


for utterance and description, too sacred for one 
other eye even to witness. 

Such affection from two such people could 
have but one termination. One year after the 
tourists’ return the fine old mansion of the 
'Howes was lighted from basement to roof in 
honor of the loveliest wedding ever celebrated 
in those parts. 


•. •• .f 

A FOOT RACE FOR A BABY. 

H ELLO! Is that you, doctor?” came through 
the receiver of the telephone at one o’clock 
in the morning. “Well, I wish you would come to 
our house immediately. Our baby is suffering in- 
tensely, and seems to be very ill. Sorry to disturb 
you, and would not, but we are very uneasy.” The 
doctor had heard this very same speech many, 
many times before, especially from young parents, 
and many times had rushed breathlessly into a 
home only to find baby suffering from some slight 
functional disarrangement and already better. 
“All right. Thank you, doctor. Get here as 
quickly as you can.” 

Now, a doctor intuitively detects disease. As 
soon as a room is entered, suggestions from an 
unknown source begin to come to him, and in a 
moment or two the diagnosis is made. Supple- 
mentary examinations and questionings generally 
confirm the first idea. 

On this occasion the pallor of face and counte- 
nance, swollen by sorrow, of the young father be- 
tokened the fact that something really serious 
was the matter. The ghostly face of the mother 
bending over the tightly clasped form of a two- 
months-old baby confirmed the fact. A little face 

(17) 


2 


i8 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


tightly drawn with agony, with clenched white 
lips parted only to emit a faint, heart-rending 
scream, showed that the little darling was in 
mortal agony. 

A hurried examination revealed to- the doctor 
that the little sufferer was already past human 
^id ; that it was a question of but a few hours, or 
maybe minutes, and the suffering would all be 
over. The little thing was dying of some 
mysterious infantile disarrangement, deep down 
and hidden, evading all medical skill. A tiny 
dose of some quieting medicine was administered, 
and the kind-hearted physician waited to see the 
end. When the worn-out mother with breaking 
heart had relinquished her precious burden into 
the tender hands of the doctor, she threw herself 
across the cot and wept away her sorrow and 
disappointment. When the little light went out 
as the day fades into dusk, the father got his first 
glimpse of the abyss of death, the goal of all 
flesh, and tasted of that bitterest of all cups, the 
suffering and death of a beloved child. 

The little white casket came and the flowers 
and friends. The days of loneliness, too, when it 
seemed that the fountain of tears would never 
dry up, and the weeks crept away as though shod 
with leaden shoes. But the lonely little mother’s 
sorrow .was as fresh and poignant after a year 
had elapsed as ever. Not only so, but the sharp 


A FOOT RACE FOR A BABY, 


19 


edge began to cut into her health, she became pale 
and thin, her strength left her, and knowing ones 
said: “It will not be long at this rate ere she 
will follow her baby.” The father, strong man 
that he was, had not only the grief for his 
baby but terrible solicitude for his wife to con- 
tend with. His business was transacted in a 
perfunctory way, he had no ears for news or 
for music, and hardly recognized a friend when he 
met him. 

“Unless something comes back into the life of 
the bereft mother,” said three doctors in consulta- 
tion, “she won’t live a month.” 

The little village where this man, Herbert 
Henry, and his wife lived was on the Great South- 
ern Railway, eighty-five miles from Apton. A 
day or two after this consultation Mr. Henry, on 
his way to the store one morning, was attracted 
by a crowd on the sidewalk standing close around 
an excited man in the center, who was talking and 
gesticulating in an emphatic way. Mr. Henry 
heard him say : “This morning, a little after day, 
a pretty young woman alighted from No. 3 with 
two grips, holding a lovely little baby about three 
weeks old in her arm§. After tarrying at the 
station a while, she went to a near-by hotel, where 
she got her breakfast and retired to a room. No 
one was thinking about her at all, nor was any 
attention attracted to her affairs until about three 


20 WJIEN DREAMS DAME TRUE. 


hours after her arrival, when the maid on that 
floor was alarmed by the continued crying of a 
very small baby, in Room 24. Entering, she 
found the prettiest little baby she ever saw lying 
on the bed, where it had just waked up from a 
nice, long nap and was crying like its heart would 
break. Inquiry for the mother revealed the fact 
that she had left the hotel a short time before, 
and since her. departure three trains had gone in 
three different directions. The two suit cases 
were full of beautiful, costly, and dainty baby 
clothes, but there was absolutely nothing by which 
the place of residence or the name could be 
detected except a tiny ‘Z’ worked in each gar- 
ment with pink silk thread. The hotel keeper got 
as mad as a hornet when he had examined into 
matters, although the hotel bill had been paid in 
advance. He got so mad that he picked up 
the suit cases and had the chambermaid follow 
with the baby back over to the depot, where he 
laid it down on the office table and told the clerks 
to ‘keep their trash over there to themselves and 
not put it off on him.’ Well, the baby is still 
down there. The railroad clerks are young bache- 
lors and know nothing about babies, but one .got 
a bottle and was trying to give the baby some 
milk when I left.” 

At the conclusion of this recital two men left 
the crowd simultaneously and started off in the 


A FOOT FACE FOR A BAFT: 2t 


direction of the depot, walking hurriedly. One 
was Mr. Herbert Henry; the other a gentleman 
named Thomas; The two men paid no attention 
ta each other at first, but soon noticed that as 
one would quicken his steps the other would do 
the same. This increase in gait continued until 
both men were walking as fast as they could and 
were on the verge of running. All the crowd 
had observed their sudden departure and intu- 
itively knew what was up, for they all remem- 
bered Mr. Henry’s loss and also that Mr. Thom- 
as’s home had never been blessed by the coming of 
a baby. So the whole crowd followed. As the 
two 'principals increased their gait, the crowd 
would do likewise, until they too were walking 
as fast as they could and some were almost run- 
ning. Mr. Thomas had the longest legs, and 
therefore the best stride, so he began to move out 
ahead of Mr. Henry and soon was nearly ten feet 
in advance. Mr. Henry saw that if he won, it 
wojild be 'a sharp foot race. So, giving no special 
signal as to his intentions, he threw, himself into 
a. dead run and had passed Mr. Thomas a few feet 
before that gentleman realized what was up. 
Then he begaii'to run. Faster and faster they 
went,, and finally both men, neck and neck, were 
eornihg down the street, with every pound of 
strength they could summon, in a foot race for a 
baby! The way was open, \yith rio obstrlictions 


22 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


anywhere, and it was less than one hundred yard^ 
to the depot. Cheer after cheer broke from the 
pursuing crowd, and friend after friend among 
them urged on his favorite in the race. They 
were neck and neck still, with only fifty yards 
more to be covered. Some thought: “What if 
they both grab the baby at the same time ? Poor 
little thing! Those big, rough men might pull 
it to pieces.” On and on they went, and, like a 
bunch of stampeded cattle, the spectators followed. 
Thomas’s long legs seemed about to win the day. 
He was five steps ahead, a lead that could not 
be easily overcome, and now it was only twenty- 
five yards to the goal, which, wonderful to re- 
late, was a' baby deserted by a heartless and per- 
verted mother. Strong men racing for a prize 
of incalculable value which the natural owner 
had cast aside ! What a sight ! Well, Mr. Henry 
saw that he was beaten if he could not do better: 
So, summing up all his remaining strength, he 
threw it into one last powerful spurt. He caught 
up with his competitor, whose strength was almost 
exhausted. He passed him a foot or two, just 
enough to dart into the door of the railroad office 
in' advance of the other man. He snatched the 
nursing baby from the awkward hands of the 
young clerk and pressed it to his bosom with his 
lef^' arm. He then grabbed both the • suit cases 
with his right hand, and the race was won. 


A FOOT RACE FOR A BABY. 23 


Twenty minutes later a triumphant crowd of 
interested sympathizers saw. a sweet, sad, bereft 
mother press the wee baby to her bosom, and saw 
the tears of joy come down her cheeks. The little 
forsaken stranger had found a warm nest and a 
loving heart such as only God can make; . - 


SALT-MAKING TIME. 

F all the seasons of the year, the one most 



w looked forward to, with the exception of 
Christmas, was salt-making time in Middle Ala- 
bama. Mind you, the time written about was 
many years before the advent of the railways, 
steamships, and other means of rapid and con- 
stant transportation; a time when people had to 
depend more on their own resources than they 
do now ; a time when, if one needed any staple 
article or commodity, he would possibly be com- 
pelled to do without it indefinitely. Salt-making 
time came after the crops were laid by and the 
pressing work of harvest was over ; when the 
cotton plant was blooming and before the bolls 
had formed ; after the corn was laid by, the hay 
cut and put in the barn, and the oats were in the 
shock; in the little lull just before cotton-picking 
time, and when the corn must be cut or gathered. 
That was salt-making time. 

Usually seven or eight neighboring farmers 
would combine arid go together and stay until a 
year’s or two years’ supply would be made up, 
and then all would return. The place where the 
salt was made by these people was on the coast of 
the Gulf of Mexico, about two hundred miles 
south of Union Springs. Sometimes a whole 


(24) 


SALT^MAKING TIME. 


25 


family would go — father, mother, and children, 
with a negro or two. At other times just the 
head of the family, with a son or two and a negro 
to do the hardest work, would be the envied ones. 

A memorable time was in 1842, when eight of 
the closest neighbors went together. The trip 
had been planned for and talked over for months. 
A great time was anticipated, and every arrange- 
ment and detail was gone over with minute care, 
for it was no small undertaking. First, the ac- 
tual journey could not be made under seven days. 
The last hundred miles of the trip was through 
a sparsely settled region of interminable pine 
forests, boggy streams, and dim roads. Deer and 
bears were plentiful, and so were rattlesnakes and 
Indians. Food, medicine, and all kinds of camp 
equipage had to be carried along, together with 
enough feed for the horses to last until the re- 
turn. 

At last the day dawned that had been fixed 
for the trip to begin, and all was in readiness. 
About an hour before day everybody was waked 
up, dressed in a hurry, a little breakfast was swaF 
lowed, the teams of great mules and prancing 
horses were harnessed to the big covered wag- 
ons, the word was passed down the line, whips 
cracked, and they were off. Eight large white 
covered wagons made quite a procession down 
the lovely white sandy roads that beautiful July 


^ WHEN^DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


day. When camp was reached that evening at 
dusk, thirty-five miles had been traveled. A 
Supper of ham, eggs, pie, and cake was eaten 
which was too delicious for description, and the 
Cdrripany made themselves almost sick eating. 
After supper, all climbed back into the covered 
wagons and were soon fast asleep. 

' Late Saturday afternoon they arrived at the 
Lanks of a lovely brook, caused by the bubbling 
up of a large spring near by. This place was 
about fifty miles from the coast, near where the 
little town of Mason sprang up some years after. 
Here they camped and remained in restful qui- 
etude Until three o^clock Monday morning. In 
this' brook there was caught a quantity of Very 
fine trout and perch — in fact, enough fish was 
caught here to 'supply the whole party with all 
they could eat at two meals. 

On Sunday morning they bowed their heads 
under the primeval pines, in the solemnity of its 
impressive quietude, and thanked God for his 
blessings and mercies. As one of the party read 
a chapter from the Holy Bible and the rest sat 
around on the fragrant clean pine straw, all felt 
that the Maker of heaven and earth was near. 
Orie little boy sitting on the banks of the stream 
amid the violets and yellow and pink wild flowers 
was especially impressed with the sweetness of 
the day. Rarely does so holy a day come to one. 


SALT-MAKING TIME. if 

On Tuesday at eleven o'clock the teams were 
halted on the white sandy beach of the Gulf of 
Mexico. Camp was established immediately. 
The great iron kettles, each holding seventy-five 
gallons, were taken out of the wagons and ar- 
ranged four together. The salty water of the 
gulf was brought in buckets and the kettles were 
filled to the brim. Under them were built great 
fires of lightwood knots that roared and blew 
and spluttered, sending up great volumes of 
black smoke. The water was soon boiling, and 
salt-making was under full headway. When the 
the water had boiled down low in the four kettles, 
it was dipped out of three kettles and put in 
the fourth, and the three were again filled with 
Water from the gulf. One negro tended the 
fires and brought water during the day and 
another during the night, for the process never 
stopped when once begun. When night fell oh 
that first day’s work, three hundred pounds of fine 
snowy salt had been made at our battery of ket- 
tles alone. It was sacked and deposited in the 
wagons. Piles of lightwood knots (fat pine) 
had been gathered and piled up near the kettles. 
Little trenches and reservoirs for the water to 
run up near the kettles and stand a while had 
been cleared out, for in the course of a day’s evap- 
oration the water in a little pond by the sea will 
become much heavier with salt than otherwise. - 


2S WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


When everything was working well, the men 
left the drudgery in the hands of the negroes and 
disposed themselves to near-by places to hunt 
and fish. Deer and bears were plentiful, also 
birds and squirrels. As for fish, such an abun- 
dance of every kind was caught as was never be- 
fore dreamed of. 

One afternoon three of the men came to camp 
with a meal sack nearly full of turtle eggs. The 
way they found them was as follows: As they 
were walking up the sandy beach, one of them 
saw a huge turtle suddenly glide down the slope 
and plunge ofif into the gulf. The man estimated 
that it was at least thirty-six inches across the 
back, and did not weigh less than two hundred 
pounds. He shot it with his rifle before it got 
out of sight, and towed it back to shore and se- 
cured it. He then took the ramrod out of his 
rifle, ran it down in the loose sand of the sea- 
shore, and drew it out with some of the broken 
eggshells on it (for turtles lay their eggs in 
the sand) ; then they dug down to the turtle’s 
nest and nearly filled the sack with the eggs. 
Next day there were nearly twenty gallons of tur- 
tle soup, scrambled turtle eggs, fried fish, corn 
bread, and roasted oysters for dinner. 

The oyster beds were located about two miles 
out, on Deer Island. A little sailboat wa$ $e- 
cured and a party went over that morning.. They 


SALT-MAKING TIME. 


29 


were easily found, as low tide left the upper edge 
of the beds exposed. The oysters were there by 
the ship load, and all the party had to do was to 
load up the boat and sail back. Oysters are not so 
good in the summer as they are in the winter, be- 


We crossed to Deer Island. 

cause they are thin and gristly; but all enjoyed 
them more than can be told. They were the 
kind that are canned and called cove oysters. 
None of the party dreamed that there were so 
many different kinds of sea animals. There was 
the jellyfish, just like a cup of pale gelatine float- 
ing in the water. There was the needlefish, some 
of which were about eight inches long and pur- 



30 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 

plish in color, not much larger around than a 
knitting needle. There were crabs, ugly, hate- 
ful-looking things, like crawfish, that seemed to 
go backward. There were porpoises, great black 
fish ten or fifteen feet long, swimming and diving 
every second or two after their prey. There were 
sharks, ugly, venomous monsters, swimming near 
the surface, with their two back fins sticking up 
above the water. There were sardines in huge 
schools, miles and miles long and acres wide, that 
gave the water another tint as they leaped and 
swarn. 

Well, all too quickly the day came when enough 
salt had been made and faces had to be turned 
toward home. Each wagon had in it not less 
than two thousand pounds of clean, fine white 
salt sacked up in strong sacks, Seashells of 
wondrous beauty, lovely interwoven seaweed, and 
other specimens had been collected for the folks 
at home to See. Fish, eggs, and oysters for a 
meal or two along the road had been safely de- 
posited, and the party reluctantly turned their 
backs on the lovely expanse of the sea and started 
toward home. The journey back took eight days 
because of the heavy loads, but it was safely made 
and they were at home again. 


CROSSING THE SWOLLEN STREAM. 

Y oung WilUam Crenshaw had the reputa- 
tion of being the most versatile and re- 
sourceful lad in all the Clay Hill section. From 
boyhood he had seemed to make it a study to 
work out of any predicament that might befall 
him and be ready for any emergency that might 
arise. If any one wanted a string at a critical 
juncture, William always had one, and a good, 
strong one too. Did a lady want her pencil 
pointed? William’s knife was the sharpest in 
the crowd, and the politeness and grace with 
which he would step up and proffer his services 
were charming to anybody. In fact, the first 
notice his schoolmates ever took of him was once 
when his teacher during class exercises asked to 
borrow a knife. William’s was forthcoming in 
an instant, and he put such a nice, long, regular 
point on the pencil, catching the pencil shavings 
in the palm of his left hand during the process 
and placitig them in the wastebasket, as to call 
forth an exclamation of appreciation from the 
teacher, who held up the pencil that all the class 
might see, and it won their respect immediately. 
Those boys have taken more pains and care of 
their pencils and shavings ever- since that time. - 

(31) 


32 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

If a nail, a tack, a slip of paper, a pin, a slate 
pencil, or a match was needed, somewhere out of 
his hidden treasures William would produce one. 
It was not long, therefore, before all his com- 
panions turned instinctively to William for any- 
thing that any sudden emergency created a de- 
mand for. He was once asked the secret of his 
resourcefulness, and he laid bare with naive 
frankness the deepest psychological reason there- 
for. “It hurts my feelings,” he replied, “and I 
feel that I have been reflected upon and dis- 
graced, if any one asks a question I can’t answer, 
needs anything I can’t supply, or requires some- 
thing I can’t do.” 

It really seemed that nothing could block him 
and that he could find a way out of every maze 
or doubt he would get into or predicament that 
might befall him. Once while at college he, to- 
gether with eight other boys, assembled in a room 
on the fourth floor to read their Cvid for an 
approaching Latin examination. A dozen mis- 
chievous fellow-students dragged a bench against 
the wall outside in the hall and, looping a strong 
rope around the door knob, tied it so securely 
that the door could not be opened even a quarter 
of an inch. They declared their intention of 
keeping the nine boys in the room all night, and 
when eleven-thirty came the shut-ins decided that 
the outsiders meant what they said. Fully twenty 


CROSSING THE SWOLLEN STREAM. 33 

boys had collected in the hallway, and all had 
pitchers of water. All the lights had been turned 
out, and the attacking crowd had declared that if 
by any chance those inside should manage to get 
the door open, they would throw the water on 
them. Polite requests met with nothing but 
laughter and jeers. The prisoners would not beg, 
so there they were. It seemed that nothing on 
earth could be done but to stay up all night. 

At twelve o’clock William said in a whisper: 
“Boys, you can all stay here if you want to, but 
I am going to get out.” 

“How on earth will you do it ?” they asked. 

“Don’t talk so loud,” warned William. “There 
is some way, and I am going to find it.” 

The boy that occupied that room remembered 
that he had a small rope that came around his 
trunk. The rope was just thirty feet long and 
very slender. “But,” said he, “it is sixty feet to 
the ground.” 

“Get it out,” said William. He doubled it, 
looped it around his breast under his arms, 
threw up the window, and had all to catch hold. 
“I want you to let me down to the window of 
the story below, which is immediately below this 
window. I will then run back upstairs just as 
fast as I can and cut the rope. Then all of you 
throw the door wide open, rim out with what 
water you have in here, dash it on the crowd 
3 


34 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 

outside, and we will be freed from our tormen- 
tors/’ 

Thus it was agreed, and in three minutes the 
rope was cut, the sudden, unexpected charge had 
been made from the inside, backed up by a flood 
of cold, dirty water, and the fight was won. 

Again, one day William borrowed a spanking 
team of bay horses belonging to an uncle and 
drove to a neighboring village to see a young 
lady that he was greatly interested in. He had 
been warned by some local rowdies of that place 
to discontinue his visits to the said young lady; 
and although he knew that he was running some 
risk, he just could not stay away. So on that 
day, feeling very proud of himself and his out- 
fit, and hoping to get along all right, he touched 
the spirited horses with the whip, and away they 
went, making the little skeleton buggy fairly sail 
over the white sands of the roadway. When he 
entered the village early in the afternoon, he did 
not see a soul nor observe anything suspicious. 
After a pleasant visit of two hours, he came out 
with the young woman to take a short drive, and 
still saw nothing of a suspicious nature. He 
helped her into the buggy, untied the horses, got 
in himself, and drove fifty feet down the road be- 
fore anything happened ; but something occurred 
then, and it certainly was enough. Both the hind 
wheels came ofiF the buggy at the same instant and 


CROSSING THE SWOLLEN STREAM. 35 


let the rear end of the buggy drop down to the 
ground. Neither was hurt or even thrown out, for 
the buggy was a low one and the sand broke the 
force of the fall. Nor was this all. About fifteen 
of the young native rowdies ran out in the road 
from their near-by hiding places and began to 
guy him for all they were worth. Some threw 
pine burrs and rocks at William, and the crowd 
seemed about to charge on them and finish up 
the work. The young lady began to cry with 
indignation at the insulting treatment, but Wil- 
liam was not in the least phased by the situation. 
He quickly helped the lady to alight, cast a quick 
glance back for the axle nuts that held the 
wheels on, and, not seeing them, concluded that 
the rowdies had not only removed them but had 
thrown them away. 

What on earth was he to do? To surrender 
would be everlasting disgrace. People would 
laugh at him forever and pity him. And what 
about the young lady? She would be mixed up 
in a hateful, practical joke with a young man 
that could not extricate himself. This would 
never do. Something had to be done, and done 
quickly. 

William’s resourcefulness did not desert him 
in this hour of great need. Quick as a flash, a 
hundred times quicker than it takes to tell it, an 
idea struck him. He got one wheel, lifted up the 


36 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


axle, and slipped it on. He got the other wheel, 
lifted up the other end of the axle, and slipped 
it on. Then he untied the two hitch reins from 
the horses’ bits and securely fastened each wheel 
with a rein to the side bars of the buggy, as you 
lock a heavy wagon when going down a hill. He 
helped the young lady into the buggy, touched the 
spirited horses, and fairly flew down the road, 
the hind wheels, of course, not turning, but hold- 
ing the buggy up all well and good, and making 
such a dust behind them as soon to shut them out 
from the view of the astonished and whipped 
young rowdies whose vandalism had been put to 
naught. After a mile’s drive, they returnM to 
the young lady’s home in state, with heads up 
and no harm done. Not a soul was in sight. The 
buggy taps were found on the fence, where the 
crestfallen young fellows had respectfully placed 
them and then gone away. 

William Crenshaw graduated in medicine two 
years after this and settled down near White 
Water, in Middle Alabama, to practice his pro- 
fession. Such a man was not long in securing 
all the practice he could attend to. For ten 
miles around, where he was not actually the physi- 
cian in charge, he was the consulting physician 
when the malady became serious and dangerous. 

One March morning at about seven o’clock, in 
the midst of a driving rain which had been fall- 


CROSSING THE SWOLLEN STREAM. 37 

mg’ for twenty-four hours, a sawmill hand 
dashed up to William’s house and reported that 
Mr. Poindexter, who lived a mile the other side 
of White Water, had started out to get William to 
come and save the life of his wife; that he had 
gotten as far as White Water Creek and found 
the bridge washed away and the stream a roaring 
torrent fifty feet wide and fifteen feet deep. He 
had called across the creek, above the roar of 
the torrent, and asked one of the sawmill hands 
to gallop up to the doctor’s and see if by some 
means he could cross the stream and save the 
life of his wife, who was bleeding to death from 
an accidental cut in the temple, resulting from a 
fall on a large, sharp knife. Mr. Poindexter 
was a very worthy, hard-working young farmer, 
and loved his wife with all his heart. 

“There’s no chance on earth for you to cross 
White Water Creek, though,” said the messenger. 
“The horse or man does not live that could swim 
it, and every bridge up and down the creek for 
twenty miles is gone.” 

“All right,” said William, “we’ll see.” 

The faithful gray horse was saddled in a mo- 
ment, the medicine case and surgical instru- 
ments and appliances gotten together, and off at 
breakneck speed they went through the cold, 
driving rain. 

Arriving at the sawmill on the banks of the 


38 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


White Water, William took in the situation at a 
glance. To attempt to ford the stream on horse- 
back would be to commit suicide and drown a 
good horse. The narrowest place was fifty feet 
wide, and in places it was a hundred. The water 
was roaring downstream like a mountain torrent, 
pitching and surging like all the lost souls in 
the bad place. It was still raining and the 
creek was still rising. What on earth could be 
done ? One thing was sure : William was going 
to cross that stream. If nothing else could be 
done, he could tie his medicine case and instru- 
ments to his back and swim, if he were drowned 
in the effort. The life of that young wife must 
be saved at all hazards. Maybe she is already 
dead ! No. A messenger had come down to 
the water’s edge a short time ago and reported: 
“Husband and mother are holding the artery and 
could hold out a little longer. The rriother has 
fainted twice already; and if there is any chance, 
in God’s name hurry up and don’t delay !” 

William’s wonderful inspiration did not desert 
him in this hour of great need. A precious life 
was at stake that he could have out of danger in 
five minutes after arrival. He went to the point 
where the creek was narrowest, about fifty feet. 
He noted that the bank on his side was about ten 
feet above the roaring torrent, and on the other 
side only five feet. He also noted that a great 


CROSSING THE SWOLLEN STREAM. 39 

oak tree seventy-five feet high grew on his side 
not five feet from the edge, and that thirty- 
five feet above there was a large, strong limb 
extending far out past the middle of the stream. 
He asked for a rope, and they brought him a 
small sea grass rope about sixty feet long. He 
started to climb the oak, but an active and nimble 
sawmill hand, who had been watching every mo- 
tion with anticipative interest, snatched the rope, 
tied one end around his waist, and went up the 
tree like a squirrel. Out on the limb he climbed as 
far as he dared, and, directed by the hand of 
William, taking all the slack up in the tree, 
made the rope fast and secure and returned to 
the ground. William tied a round stick on the 
end of the rope for a handle, secured his medi- 
cine case to his back, caught hold of the handle 
of the swinging rope, went back as far as the end 
of the rope would permit, ran with all his might 
to the edge of the bluff, and swung out over 
the roaring stream. His calculations were all 
perfect. His feet barely touched the foaming 
water, and he sailed clear across until he was 
just over the bank on the opposite side; then he 
released his hold and dropped lightly to terra 
firma below. 

Arriving at the afflicted patient’s home, it was 
a matter of but a moment to gather up the end of 
the lacerated artery and tie it; a few moments 


40 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

more to cleanse the wound and sew up the edges. 
Then the lady was out of danger and resting 
peacefully on the snowy white pillow of her 
couch. 

The word *^can’t” is a disgrace and should be 
avoided like a curse. 


THE SQUIRREL HUNT. 

RTHUR BENNETT’S father was a mer- 



n chant and sold hardware. This boy’s 
proudest day dawned when, at about fifteen 
years of age, he was permitted to unpack and 
clean up a large consignment of guns — single- 
barreled and double-barreled shotguns and rifles 
— all old-fashioned muzzle-loaders. During the 
unpacking it was discovered that one beautiful 
double-barreled shotgun of light weight and fine 
finish was seriously damaged. The artistically 
carved wooden stock was badly split and was 
almost in two pieces. This unfortunate accident 
caused many regrets to be expressed on the part 
of those doing the work, for it was absolutely 
worthless in this condition. The father’s ex- 
clamation was, ''What a beauty !” and Arthur 
said: "What a pity it is broke! I wish it was 
mine.” 

Pretty soon one of the old clerks came to him 
and said: "How would you like to own that 
gun? If you will get your papa to give it to 
you, I will show you how to fix it almost as good 
as new at very little cost.” 

It really cost only $4.50 by the dozen. After a 
little persuasion, the damaged gun was pre- 


(41) 


42 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


sented to its new owner. The old gentleman re- 
ferred to then advised that a piece of thin sheet 
brass, two and a half inches square, and a dozen 
tiny brass screws be bought. The sheet brass was 
hammered to fit the wooden stock over the split 
place, and the little brass screws were used to hold 
it there. In an hour Arthur had the best gun, all 
his own, that he ever possessed. A brass-tipped 
powder horn, a shot pouch that would measure 
the loads right into the muzzle of the gun, and a 
game bag were added, and he was thoroughly 
equipped for hunting. 

A chance to go hunting was soon presented. 
Sam Alexander was employed as watchman of 
the government construction barges on the Chat- 
tahoochee River, about fifteen miles below the 
city of Columbus, Ga. Low water had stopped 
all work, so the barges and machinery were left 
in the hands of this thoroughly competent man 
and a fine young negro cook. Two-thirds of the 
time they had absolutely nothing to do. The 
bilge water had to be pumped out of the holes in 
the barges every day and the rooms, bunks, and 
machinery had to be kept scrupulously neat and 
clean. 

This fine fellow sent a kindly message to 
Arthur and an older brother to come down on 
the train to Fort Mitchell and spend a few days 
squirrel-hunting. Anybody reading this can 


THE SQUIRREL HUNT, 


43 


guess with what eagerness the invitation was 
accepted and how quickly they began to prepare 
for the hunt. The mended gun was cleaned and 
recleaned. Although it was not dirty, it was oiled 
until it shone like a mirror. Ample shot, powder, 
caps, and wads were secured; and when the 
afternoon came for them to take the M. & G. 
train for Fort Mitchell, they were ready for a 
month’s siege. Mr. Alexander met them at the 
station, and a short walk of thirty minutes 
brought them to the river, which was crossed 
in a bateau over to the barges. It was then 
nearly sundown, so they contented themselves with 
catching a few fish that afternoon and enjoying 
the delicious cool atmosphere and gentle rippling 
of the river as it made its way to the Gulf of 
Mexico. About dusk supper was announced. 
And such a supper ! That appetizing spread af- 
fects one’s appetite yet when he remembers it — the 
bright, clean coal oil lamp in the dining cabin, 
the spotless white linen tablecloth, the crystal 
glasses, the steaming cofifeepot, the dish of ham 
and fish, the boiled rice, the scrambled eggs; 
and with it all the good cheer, the novel sur- 
roundings, the hearty hospitality, the smiling 
black face of the fine young cook, their very great 
appetite, and the delicious odors. Nobody could 
keep from enjoying it to the fullest extent. 

The gentle murmur of the river soon lulled all 


44 


WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


into a deep, restful sleep that was broken only 
by the voice of the cook announcing that break- 
fast would be ready in fifteen minutes. They 
were all ready sooner than that. Outside it was 
pitch dark, and the clock said it was not quite 
four. When breakfast was over, a few gray 
streaks in the eastern heaven announced that 
daybreak was near at hand. The dark waters 
of the river were barely discernible when they 
all got into the bateau to cross the stream; but 
by the time the river was crossed and the bateau 
secured to the other side, objects began to be seen 
distinctly, and the squirrel hunt had begun. 

Now, Arthur was just a young lad and had a 
gun that had never been shot. The others made 
much sport of him. They said that his gun would 
burst at the first shot; that he could not hit a 
barn ; that he did not even know how to load it ; 
that he would get excited and put the shot in first ; 
that during the whole hunt he might kill one 
squirrel, etc. But away down in his soul Arthur 
said to himself : '‘You fellows had better be care- 
ful or I will get more than both of you put to- 
gether.’' 

Mr. Alexander had a very good squirrel dog, 
a little black-and-tan fise with sharp eyes and 
sharper nose ; but he left him at home, saying that 
they could do better without him, and that he 


THE SQ UIRREL HUNT. 45 

himself was "‘as good a squirrel dog as was ever 
made.” And he was. 

Pretty soon they came to a green bay tree grow- 
ing down in the river bottom, and Mr. Alexan- 
der’s practiced eye saw a squirrel run to the tree, 
jump up behind it, and disappear up in the thick 
foliage. The tree was surrounded by the three 
hunters, each quietly taking his place. Then one 
of them made a slight noise by shaking a limb 
of a tree, and instantly the squirrel leaped to the 
opposite side, away from the noise and over to 
Arthur’s side. His gun was instantly leveled on 
it and dead, steady aim was taken; but just as he 
pulled the trigger and the report of the gun rang 
out, the squirrel jumped to another limb, and 
Arthur had missed. Another gun went “Bang !” 
and just as it did Arthur saw still another squir- 
rel jump up to a higher limb and, taking quick 
aim, killed it so suddenly that both squirrels hit 
the ground at the same instant. 

In a few minutes another squirrel was treed, 
and before they left that spot they had killed six 
squirrels (two of which were flying squirrels) 
and had fired from all three of the guns not less 
than twenty shots. It sounded like a young 
war had broken out in the Chattahoochee bot- 
toms. A little farther down toward Uchee Creek 
a large squirrel ran up a little tree; and as soon 
as one shot bad been flred at it and missed, it ran 


46 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

straight down again and up the steep river 
bank forty feet above, and then up to the very 
top of a tall pine tree, at least ninety feet high, 
that grew on 'the edge of the river bank. Not less 
than four shots were fired at the active little ani- 
mal while it was going up; but none touched it, 
and it seemed that it bore a charmed life. They 
climbed up the river bank and, after the greatest 
difficulty, the squirrel was located on the upper 
side of a limb fully eighty feet from the ground. 
Shot after shot was fired at it without effect un- 
til finally, just as Arthur’s brother was about to 
take a last shot at it, it suddenly jumped out 
of the tree on the bluff side, a fall of at least 
one hundred and twenty feet, down to safety; but 
by a good shot it was caught on the wing, so to 
speak, and fell dead near the brink of the river. 
As many as five squirrels were killed during the 
day in one tree. The hunters had the very best 
luck. 

A large covey or partridges also was flushed, 
and a dozen of them were added to their game 
bags. Several rabbits jumped up and ran, lickety- 
skit, for dear life ; but run as fast as they could, 
the hunter’s shot would run faster, and scarcely 
any could get away. 

In the midst of the dark twilight of the Uchee 
primeval forests the hunters spread their lunch on 
a grassy plot and drank from a bubbling freestone 


THE SQUIRREL HUNT. 


47 


spring of the sweetest water one ever tasted. 
Here Mr. Alexander showed them a curious 
freak of nature. Two trees, about nine inches in 



■ Arthur killed more than all. 
diameter and growing only three feet apart, were 
joined solidly together about seven feet from the 


48 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


ground and were fixed and immovable, thus mak- 
ing a perfect letterlike capital “H.” It could not 
be determined where one tree in its projection 
had begun or where it left off. The bark and 
union of the two trees were perfect. They had 
been beautifully married together by some fairy 
priest of the woods, and each strengthened the 
other so that they were unshakable. One was a 
water oak, the other a hickory, and they are 
doubtless standing yet if some axman’s cruel 
stroke has not laid them low. Arthur never knew 
how two became three times stronger than one 
until he saw that sight. 

When they got back to the barges that night, 
they counted out their game. In spite of the 
fact that Arthur was but a boy and the others 
were grown, in spite of his broken gun and all 
their ridicule, he had beaten them both put to- 
gether. There were thirty-seven squirrels all 
told, and Arthur had killed twenty-five of them. 
Twelve partridges had been killed, and Arthur 
had killed two of them. Nine rabbits had been 
killed, and Arthur had killed three of them. They 
never ridiculed him again, and they listened when 
he gave advice about hunting. 


THE CIRCUIT RIDER^S FIRST CIRCUIT. 

J OHN WESLEY TRIGG was called to preach. 

There was absolutely no doubt of that. This 
was an unquestionable fact, not because he was 
already a preacher, for he was not; neither was 
his father, brother, or any of his kith or kin as 
far back as the family records or memory went ; 
nor was it because he was sure he could preach 
or knew anything much about the plan of salva- 
tion or other theological tenets. He knew it 
because he awoke one day with a mighty, thrilling 
joy tugging at his heart, suggesting that God 
wanted him to be a preacher. He prayed early 
and late over it. And when he yielded, he was 
happier still ; but when he refused, he was heavy 
and troubled. He had no money, friends, or 
education, and the way was obscure. But some- 
how when he began to prepare he found, to his 
amazement and delight, that one after another of 
the gates of opportunity flew open to him, a 
Hand led him in the darkness, and a sure Founda- 
tion sustained him in moments of doubt, adver- 
sity, and discouragement. By the hardest kind of 
work he got a good education, was licensed to 
preach, and on the seventh day of the following 
October he was admitted into the Annual Con- 
ference on trial, whereupon his life work began. 
4 (49) 


50 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


On the sixth day of the session he saw the rever- 
end and dignified bishop rise up with a manuscript 
in his hand, heard seventeen words of a long- 
speech delivered by this soldier of the cross to 
itinerant Methodist preachers on broadly obvious 
facts, and heard himself read out : “Blowing Cave 
Mission, J. W. Trigg.” After much inquiry 
this pastoral charge was located in the Blooming 
Grove country, back of Highland Rim, seventy- 
five miles from Northcut Pass. 

Mounting his faithful old gray horse, he set 
out immediately for the front with rapidly beating 
heart. He would go down there and establish 
the gospel on a firm footing in those parts. 
“Anything that is necessary to be done can be 
done” was one of his main working mottoes. No 
distance, obstacle, hardness, nor any other con- 
dition should be in his way. He intended to over- 
come everything in his path, be wise and thought- 
ful, continue long in prayer, and at the end of 
the year bring up such a report from the Blowing 
Cave country as would be a proof of his call to 
preach. His backbone stiffened and the cold 
chills of lofty determination ran up and down 
his spinal column. His heart was light, and now 
and then such a thrill would shoot through his 
bosom as would bring tears to his eyes. He 
could even then see some of the results of his 
ministry: weeping transgressors coming to his 



Farewell to home. 






52 WHEN DREAMS CAME TR UE. 


Lord an(l pleading for mercy, showing forth the 
fruits of pardon and faith in holy lives of activity 
in the Church; sad and broken-hearted women 
comforted and blessed, transformed into lovely 
Christian characters ; the boys and girls, sobered 
by his fiery appeals for spirituality, putting away 
their worldliness and sinful amusements ; the 
old neighborhood infidel silenced and convicted, 
bringing his reign of ruin to an end, etc. All 
such thrilling visions as these stirred his breast 
with the highest emotions, and he thanked God 
over and over again that he had called him to 
preach and had given him a place to work. 

Before he had been on his circuit two weeks, 
four things happened that sobered him up some- 
what and taught him the sternness of the con- 
test. It was not tin soldiers in mimic warfare that 
he was manipulating, but real war, hilt to hilt 
and buckler to buckler, that was on. All disil- 
lusionments are severe and sometimes fatal. 
Poor young man ! He thought everybody was as 
honest as he thought he was, that everybody had 
ideals as lofty as his, and that everybody was as 
anxious for the millennial dawn as he. Poor 
fellow ! His was a rough awakening, but it was 
very necessary. You see there is nothing easy 
about the salvation of the world or the conversion 
of sinners. If there were, it would all have been 
done long ago. Enough sermons have been 


CIRCUIT RIDER* S FIRST CIRCUIT, 53 

preached, intercessory prayers offered, martyr 
blood shed, and vicarious sufferings endured to 
save this old world twenty times over if this 
were easy to do. 

Well, the first rough shake that he got was on 
the second day after he arrived at Bisco, the little 
town that was to be his headquarters. The little 
country school had its closing exercises that day, 
and Mr. Trigg was asked to make an address. 
He did so. In it he said: ‘‘Now, boys, aim to be 
men — men in the fullest sense. You never can 
advance on that, for a man as God intended him 
to be is higher than the angels. Don’t try to be 
an angel ; it is better to be a godly man than to 
be an angel.” Now, there was sitting close by 
an old chronic kicker by the name of Sprouse, 
an intelligent sort of a man that few people liked, 
but who wielded great influence thereabout. This 
old gentleman took great umbrage at the young 
man’s “blasphemous mistake,” as he termed the 
comparison between men and angels, and raised 
a great hue and cry against him that annoyed, 
hampered, and crippled him all the year. 

Another body blow was received the following 
Sunday morning. He had just been introduced 
to the three stewards at Pushback, his farthest 
appointment, when one brusque gentleman asked 
him: “Why did not the bishop send us Brother 
Jenkins? We all wanted him.” 


54 WHEN DREAMS CAME TR UE. 


'A don’t think Brother Jenkins’s charge was 
willing to give him up,” replied the young preach- 
er meekly. ‘‘So they sent me to you instead,” 
he added pleasantly and apologetically. 

“Yes,” snarled the official in question. “We 
always get the tail end down here.” 

This was deadening, and to his dying day the 
young man winced under the cut. 

The third lick was when the eleven stewards 
met together to fix the salary for the ensuing 
year. The last pastor’s salary had been set at 
$300, but he had been paid only $274. Poor, 
dear man ! He had been preaching twenty years 
and had not found out how it felt to be paid his 
salary in full or to receive all that was coming 
to him. In this regard he had been treated worse 
than the cotton field hands, negro cooks, and 
washerwomen. These had every week received all 
contracted for, while he was sent away unpaid. 
Every year of his ministerial life there had been 
a deficit in his salary of from $25 to $100, and 
he had never received as much as $300 per year 
in his life. He had read books on “Ministerial 
Manners and Customs,” “Clerical Morals,” “Self- 
Denial,” “Should a Preacher Ever Go in Debt?” 
“Prayer and Consecration,” etc. It is true that 
he had never seen lying around in the homes of 
the people he visited any such books written for 
laymen and read by them; nor had he observed 


CIRCUIT RIDER'S FIRST CIRCUIT. 55 

any very great earnestness displayed by any one 
for the preacher’s salary to be paid. So for the 
twentieth time he had gone to Conference with a 
deficit on his salary. What a crime ! What a 
shame and outrage ! Such heart-rending neglect 
disgusts even old Satan himself. 

Well, on the day in question there was a de- 
termined effort made to cut the salary. -‘We 
paid only $274 last year to the preacher, and 
that is all we can pay this year,” said Bracket. 
“Let us promise what we pay, and pay what we 
promise.” 

“Them’s my sentiments exactly,” said Moore, 
“and I am not willing to tax my people more than 
they will pay.” 

“You are all wrong,” said Jackson. “Let us 
promise what we should pay, and pay it.” 

But the fight went on and on. Some grew 
mad, red in the face, and hurled something in 
Jackson’s teeth about his Church monopolizing 
all the preacher’s time, and the preacher spend- 
ing more time at Jackson’s house than anywhere 
else. After much talk they compromised the 
matter by fixing the salary at $292.50. “Well,” 
said Brother Trigg, surprised beyond measure, 
“no one values salvation at all, a preacher’s work 
is nothing, and all the sacrifice is packed off on 
him.” 

The fourth lick was a solar plexus blow, so 


56 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


to speak. At Pullen’s Branch, all unknown to 
Brother Trigg, the entire Church membership 
and residents of the community were divided 
into two parties. These two parties were headed 
on one side by old man Carter and on the other 
by old man Crawford. The Carters and the 
Crawfords had divided that country for years, 
and the untoward, hateful contest was just at 
this time at its highest. They and their followers 
sat on different sides of the church, and would 
neither mingle nor mix with the rest. If the 
Carters started an ‘ enterprise, the Crawfords 
would frown it down. If the Crawfords proposed 
an improvement, the Carters would laugh it away. 
When the pastor would give out a hymn on Sun- 
day morning, if old man Carter started it to a 
tune, the Crawfords would not sing it. If old 
man Crawford pitched it to a tune first, the Car- 
ters would not sing it. And so it had been going 
on for months. 

Well, the second Sunday of Brother Trigg’s 
pastorate, knowing nothing whatever of this 
chaotic behavior, he began his first service there 
by rising and giving out that grand old hymn, 
''A Charge to Keep I Have.” A cynical observer 
over in the comer saw old man Carter find the 
hymn hastily, moisten his lips, take in a full breath 
or two, and get ready to raise the tune first. This 
man glanced over at old man Crawford and ob- 


CIRCUIT RIDERS S FIRST CIRCUIT, 57 

served the same things taking place. He, too, was 
ready to go off in a twinkling. Each followed the 
reading of the hymn clear down to the end with 
the closest attention, ready at the proper moment 
to start the tune. Mr. Cynic began to wonder: 
“If they both pitch the tune on the same key at 
the same moment, what a fine chorus they will 
have ! And won’t the young preacher be charmed 
with the sturdy voices and great effort! But 
suppose they are not on the same key and each 
follows his leader all the way through, what 
then?” 

But further meditation was cut short. As the 
preacher was finishing his reading, both old gen- 
tlemen took in a long breath at the same moment, 
and at the same instant began to sing, not only 
on different keys, but with different tunes alto- 
gether, followed in full chorus by the devoted 
followers of each. Now, was not that confusion 
let loose? All realized what was done and tried 
to follow his leader in louder tones than the other. 
Some lost the tune altogether and forgot what 
was being sung, so they made up by yelling at 
the top of their voices. 

At first Brother Trigg was swept completely 
off his feet, shocked beyond measure. He had 
never dreamed of anything like this. Recovering 
his equilibrium, however, he arose as they were 
singing the third line, waved his hands impatient- 


58 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


ly for silence, and, when this was secured, said: 
“For heaven’s sake, brethren, what does this 
mean? Do let us worship God decently and in 
order.” He then pitched the hymn to another 
tune, and all joined in the singing. 


A FLOOD OF BUTTERMILK. 


D id you ever see a bee swamped in its own 
honey? It is a spectacle at once pitiful, 
tragical, and humorous — in fact, the humorous 
always grows out of the tragical, and to a sym- 
pathetic heart is seasoned with the pitiful. 

Brother J. had an experience once while pastor 
of two Churches (a double-barreled station) that 
smacks of all three of the qualities above men- 
tioned. The sweet and gentle mistress of the par- 
sonage was ill, very ill of a stubborn malarial 
fever, and their faithful friend and adviser, the 
country doctor, was in daily attendance at her 
bedside. 

Now, it means something when serious illness 
enters a preacher’s home. He is a stranger. His 
means are limited. He has no relatives in the 
community. He has helped many others, and 
they look upon him as a helper and not as one 
to be helped. Means of communication are lim- 
ited. The pastor hesitates to ask for favors and 
is diffident about putting others to trouble. Deep 
suffering always ensues when the pastor or his 
wife in country places gets seriously ill. On this 
occasion the illness became so severe and serious 
that all solid food was forbidden, and a glass of 
fresh, cold buttermilk every two hours, night and 

( 59 ) 


6o WHEN DREAMS' CAME TRUE. 


day, was prescribed. This kept up the patient’s 
strength and helped her fight the disease. Their 
cow, Old Brindle, a kind, good old thing that 
gave them five gallons of milk a day in season, 
was not giving milk at the time. So their kindly 
neighbor, the doctor’s wife, would send a large 
bucketful each day. 

Late one afternoon, when the fever was at its 
worst and anxiety was at its highest, the doc- 
tor’s wife sent word that the milk had not 
“turned” and she could not supply them any 
that afternoon. This report brought consterna- 
tion. There was no messenger to send elsewhere, 
no means of communication, no passing dairy 
wagons nor corner groceries where such things 
were sold. 

Failure to secure this, the only article of diet 
the sufferer could take, would be a privation des- 
perate indeed, and might bring consequences of 
the most distressing character. The more the 
husband thought of it, the more worried and 
desperate he became. 

Just at the moment when he was most wor- 
ried his friend and parishioner, Mrs. Sory, drove 
her buggy up in front of the parsonage to make 
inquiries about the sick wife. The situation was 
explained to her. “Sister Sory,” said he, “my 
wife can take no food now but buttermilk, and 
Mrs. Bradley, who has been kindly supplying us, 


A FLOOD OF BUTTERMILK, 6i 

cannot send us any to-day. Could you possibly 
send us some without stinting yourself?" 

“We have the greatest abundance, and you are 
welcome to all you need ; but I fear I pannot send 
it, as Mr. Sory is waiting for the buggy now to 
go several miles on an important errand before 
dark. I will go home and see, but don’t depend 
on it," said Sister Sory. And she drove rapidly 
away. 

In a few minutes a very dear friend, Mrs. K., 
drove up to make inquiries about the sick wife, 
and the preacher related to her all that had just 
been told Mrs. Sory. 

Said he: “Do you think you could send us 
some milk this evening, Mrs. K. ?" 

Said she: “I don’t know. I left Mr. K. for a 
few minutes only, and he is waiting impatiently 
now for the horse and buggy to go to Howell and 
return before night. But if it is possible, I shall 
accommodate you." She drove off. 

Then a son of Mrs. L. passed. Said the pastor : 
“Robert, do you suppose your mother could send 
us a bucket of milk this afternoon? Mrs. J. can 
take no nourishment now but milk. None of the 
ladies to whom I have spoken are sure of sup- 
plying us, and something must be done." 

Robert replied that he would go home and speak 
to his mother about it, but doubted that relief 
could come to them from that quarter. 


62 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


At this the poor minister was quite panic- 
stricken. By a passing negro he sent word to 
Sister P. of the condition of things, and asked 
help ; but the negro was a trifling fellow, and it 
was not thought that the message would reach her. 
By one of his little children the pastor sent to a 
neighbor a short distance away ; but she was not 
at home, and the child left the request with her 
little daughter. 

At last, as good luck would have it, Mrs. A. 
came to see them ; and when the minister had ex- 
plained his predicament, to his very great relief 
she said: “Why, we have plenty of milk, and I 
will go right over home and get you some now.” 
She was gone but a few minutes, returning with a 
good supply of delicious fresh buttermilk; and 
all fears from that source were at an end. 

A crystal goblet one-third filled with cracked 
ice and poured full of fresh, thick buttermilk was 
soon pressed to the parched lips of the fevered 
sufferer, and with a smile she drank all she want- 
ed. Greatly refreshed, she laid her aching head 
back on her pillow and soon dropped off to sleep. 

But things began to happen fast just then, and 
in the most unexpected way. Did it ever occur 
to you that the very best time in the world to get 
things is when you do not need them? One is 
least likely to get that which he needs most, and 
most likely to get that which he needs least. 


A FLOOD OF BUTTERMILK, 63 


Sister S., whip in hand, with flushed cheeks 
and a foaming horse, dashed up to the front gate 
and handed down a two-gallon bucket of milk, 
saying: “Empty this quickly; Mr. S. is impa- 
tient to be gone.” Hardly had she disappeared 
when Sister K. trotted her old family nag up to 
the parsonage gate, saying : “Here is some milk 
for Mrs. J. Empty quickly, for Mr. K. must 
take the horse and hurry away.” It was done. 
Then Mr. C., a steward, who had been told by 
Mrs. K. on her way home of the sick wife's need, 
came afoot across the fields with a three-gallon 
bucket of buttermilk and a gallon bucket of sweet 
milk. “Empty,” said he. And it was done. In 
ten minutes a bucket arrived from Sister L., and 
then one from Sister P., all in a hurry, with the 
request : “Empty and send the bucket back.” 

When the dust had all settled under the hurry- 
ing footsteps of men and horses and wheels, 
Brother J. took stock. Every bucket, every pan, 
and every bowl they had was full of milk. He 
had even filled the stove pots, and one bucket had 
been slyly slipped out into the back yard and 
emptied behind a tree, so that it might be sent 
back and the joke not be discovered. 

Nor was this all. Things having begun to hap- 
pen, it seemed that they would never cease — like 
an old family clock that once went on a strike 
about striking, and so remained for a whole day. 


64 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

but then declared the strike good and off by strik- 
ing three hundred and seventy-five times before 
it quit. For, last of all, it came to pass that a 
modest messenger arrived from the charming 
Sister B., the doctor’s wife, remarking meekly: 
“I have brought you a little milk. Mrs. B. did 
not think she could churn this afternoon, but the 
milk ^turned,’ and here it is.” 

It was commonly reported soon afterwards 
that the buttermilk had come in such a sudden 
flood that there was then enough on hand to 
drown all of the preacher’s six children and 
whitewash the fence in addition. 


WHEN BILLY LOST HIS HEAD. 


B illy was just an ordinary, everyday sort 
of a small boy, about eight years of age. 
He was the youngest son of his dear mother, a 
hysterical, high-strung, nervous lady just as good 
as she could be, and she could be mighty good, es- 
pecially when everything went to suit her, which 
was seldom the case, of course. But Billy’s 
mother was good, anyhow — good even when she 
was not so good. 

Billy was just like any other little boy. 'He could 
not sit still very long at a time, and when he was 
compelled to do so even for a short time it give 
him a great deal of trouble. His legs and ankles 
itched and wanted to move and run and jump, 
and that strange, ticklish feeling would move up 
to his hips and make him wriggle and wriggle, 
and finally land in his lower ribs, when he would 
be compelled to giggle or laugh outright, and 
sometimes he would have to yell or hello just 
as loud as his throat would stand and his lungs 
permit. After such an outburst of spontaneous 
excessiveness, he would instinctively dodge or 
get up and run out or do something else that was 
strange and unusual in anybody but a boy. But 
Billy was. the sweetest brown-eyed, tousle-head- 

S (6s) 


•V *j]Vf 



( 66 ; 


CIUvY. 


WHEN BILLY LOST HIS HEAD. 67 


ed boy in Austin. Everybody knew that, and 
many had already said so before that day dawned 
when he lost his head. It is strange but true that 
the safety of every ship is dependent on its weak- 
est bolt. Banks break or hold by the strength of 
their weakest officials, and no race horse can trot 
faster than his weakest leg will permit. A very 
small boy can wreck very large expectations. 

Now, Ben Tower and Merina Mason were fix- 
ing to get married. Everybody knew that, from 
the smith that shod the horses to old Miss Sara 
at the head of the street, who knew everything. 
Ben did not tell anybody. He was a bashful 
young fellow and was staying away from town a 
great deal of late. Merina did not tell many, and 
they had promised faithfully not to tell any- 
body; but still the public mind was confident 
that Ben and Merina were going to get married. 
Old Miss Sara had her suspicions first aroused 
when, during a visit or two at the Mason home, 
she found Merina “doing nothing but crocheting 
trimming and quilting all the time.” Then when 
Merina and her mother went to town and came 
back with arms and arms full of bundles, she just 
knew what was up. And that settled it. Every- 
body was interested, and the interest rose to fever 
heat when it was announced that the wedding 
was going to be at the church and everybody was 
invited; that the minister from Columbus would 



68 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

say the ceremony ; that there would be eight brid- 
al couples, with the wedding march on the pipe 
organ; that a reception would immediately fol- 
low at the Mason mansion ; that the presents were 


already coming in ; that Mr. Mason was going to 
give Ben the Babbitt place down the creek ; that 
Walt Howell, Merina’s other faithful suitor, had 
threatened suicide and had said that Ben should 
never have Merina, etc. 


The wedding march on the pipe organ. 



WHEN BILLY LOST HIS HEAD. 69 

On the afternoon of the wedding day everybody 
was electrified by the report that Walt, slightly in- 
toxicated, had just ridden through the town at 
breakneck speed on his spirited horse, and that he 
had with him a double-barreled shotgun. So when 
the six or seven hundred people assembled at the 
church that evening, they were expecting some- 
thing to happen. The whole populace was nerv- 
ous and excited and wrought up. Many things 
had been told and retold, nor had anything lost a 
whit in the telling. So all were expecting some- 
thing to happen. Old Miss Sara said: ‘T feel in 
my bones that there is going to be trouble.” But 
then Miss Sara didn’t have to reach deep to get to 
her bones. So everybody was sure something 
would happen, and it did. That is one thing you 
can depend on always — that something will hap- 
pen — and this interesting occasion was no ex- 
ception to the rule. 

Billy’s mother and Billy went. Billy’s mother 
did not want to take Billy especially, nor did Billy 
care to go; but if Billy’s mother went, Billy 
would have to go. There was nothing else for 
Billy, so Billy went. These two went early to get 
a good seat, going at least an hour before the wed- 
ding was scheduled to occur, and weddings are 
proverbially late. From scriptural immemoriality 
until this day of grace, weddings are late. And 
the delay is always charged up to the bridegroom 


70 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


— very justly, too, I think, for the bride is always 
ready. They went early, Billy and his mother; 
but as early as they went, the house was already 
half full, and Billy and his mother got a seat on 
the inside of the pew next to the middle window 
on the right side of the church, about halfway to 
the rear, Billy on the end of the seat next to the 
window. Now, the young people had been work- 
ing hard all day on the church, and at sundown it 
was most beautifully decorated. Wreaths, vines, 
flowers, and lace drapery were everywhere. The 
' middle windows on each side had received special 
attention. Heavy creamy lace curtains had been 
brought from the Mason home and hung in these 
middle windows, and others had been crossed full 
length over them and tacked to the wall, the effect 
being the same as a Maltese cross. The lower 
ends had been caught up by delicate pink ribbons 
in a graceful fold and attached to the side of the 
window. In the center of each window base there 
was a lovely silver candelabra holding five varicol- 
ored wax candles. Now, as I said, Billy was sit- 
ting next to this window, at times almost envel- 
oped in some of the folds of the lace curtains. It 
was the plan to turn down the gas somewhat just 
before the bridal party came in and light the wax 
candles in the windows. 

Now, that hour that Billy had to wait before the 
wedding began was an awful experience to that 


WHEN BILLY LOST HIS HEAD. 


71 


poor boy and to his dear mother and to two or 
three others sitting near, for pretty soon both of 
Billyhs feet went fast asleep. By dint of swing- 
ing and kicking he got them waked up again, and 
then his ankles and legs began to itch. When he 
had scratched and scratched these enough, his hips 
began to tickle, and such a wriggling and wrig - 
gling an old maid school-teacher who sat just be- 
hind “never saw nor heard of before.” The tickle 
then moved up to his lower ribs, and he was just 
about to give one of his wildest and most consol- 
ing yells when a gentleman in a swallow-tailed 
coat walked in and began to light the wax candles. 
Billy’s uneasy symptoms began immediately to 
subside. 

When the candles were all lighted and the gas 
was slightly lowered at the big valve behind the 
door in the vestibule, a wonderful calm settled 
over the audience, the pipe organ began the wed- 
ding march, and the first bridal couples began their 
slow, graceful march down the aisles. One passed 
Billy’s seat, but he saw them for only an instant, 
lie could not tell whence they came nor whither 
they went. He could not see far enough, for he 
was too small. Another passed and another, but 
Billy had lost interest in the whole thing and 
sought amusement in another direction. About 
the time he heard the minister in solemn tones 
say, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here,” he 


72 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

glanced up to the wax candles burning just above 
his head and began to think vaguely that 
one of the candles was slightly scorching the 
graceful folds of the lace curtain just above it. 
He watched it for a moment or two,* and was sure 
of it. About the time he heard the minister say, 
“Benjamin, wilt thou have this woman for thy 
wedded wife?” the stillness in the church being 
almost oppressive, Billy reached over and whis- 
pered a loud “Marma!” But his dear mamma 
only nudged him in the side with her right el- 
bow and said, “Shut up your mouth!” as quick 
as if it were one word. 

Billy looked up at the curtain again and saw 
that it was much yellower from the scorching 
light than before. He began to get a little scared, 
and, leaning over again, whispered, “M-a-r-m-a,” 
just as the preacher was saying: “Merina, wilt 
thou have this man for thy wedded husband?” 
“I’ll box your ears if you open your mouth 
again!” said Billy’s mother, and then Billy saw 
that if the occasion was saved he would have to 
do it all by himself. So he decided to push the 
whole candelabra to the other side and thus re- 
lieve the scorching situation. So, as the preacher 
began to say, “Forasmuch as Benjamin and 
Merina have consented together in holy wed- 
lock,” Billy pushed the candelabra about two 
inches farther to the left and looked quickly at 


WHEN BILLY LOST HIS HEAD. 73 

his mother. Now, poor little boy, he didn’t 
know the other side had been scorching too, and, 
like many other folks, he could not comprehend 
the far-reaching effect of an innocent act — on the 
other side. So after the push he simply looked at 
his mother, for she might slap him. He remem- 
bered hearing the minister say, “I pronounce you 
man and wife together;” but after that Billy’s 
mind was greatly confused, and even to this day 
he has no clear idea of all that happened. Some 
one yelled “Fire!” and all around Billy became 
bright. A strange crackling and roaring noise 
sounded in his ears, two or three little shreds of 
fire dropped on his sleeve, his mother grabbed him 
and ran out in the aisle, and then pandemonium 
broke loose. The lace curtains were in a blaze 
that reached up to the ceiling and spread out up 
there for twenty feet. The aisles were full of 
struggling, screaming, fainting women and men. 
Some one in the vestibule, thinking the gas light 
was setting fire to the building, turned the great 
valve around, shutting off the light. Such a 
stampede one cares not to see again. In the ter- 
ror and confusion the bride and groom were sep- 
arated, and did not get back together for thirty 
minutes, when the best man handed her over un- 
hurt to the groom on the outside of the church. 
Well, in two minutes the lace curtains were com- 
pletely burned up and the fire was out, for the 


74 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

woodwork did not catch, although the paint on 
the window frame was blistered and discolored. 
When the fire was no more and the excitement 
had subsided, it was found that only a few were 
hurt, and none of them seriously. 

Some said they were sure that Walt Howell 
had something to do with it, to break up the 
wedding, but Miss Sara said: “Ef he did, he 
failed, fer I heard the preacher pronounce ’em 
man and wife before they yelled ‘Fire !’ ” Billy 
settled the whole thing at school the next day 
when he said : “Ef it hadn’t ter been fer me, the 
whole thing, house and all, would er burnt up, 
fer I saw it a-catchin’ and pushed the candlestick 
over to the other side.” 


PINEY ON A RAMPAGE. 



WO young business men, drummers for Nash- 


1 ville wholesale houses, drove their spirited 
team of bay horses down the banks and over the 
graveled roadway to the crystal waters of Piney 
Creek, in Hickman County, Tenn., one sultry 
afternoon in July. Lowering the checkreins, they 
drove knee-deep into the cool waters, where the 
thirsty horses, plunging in, mouths, noses, and all, 
halfway up to their eyes, began to slake their 
thirst as though they were half famished. After 
the horses had drunk all they wanted, since the 
young men were in no hurry, they let the team 
stand in the refreshing stream and paw and switch 
with their long, silken tails until the water was 
all over their panting sides. While this was going 
on they noticed for the first time an old gray- 
haired colored man, with hoe in hand, leaning on 
the top of a rail fence that inclosed a potato patch 
where he had been at work. The old man was 
contemplating them with much interest, and 
seemed to mark the team of horses with special 
approval. 

'‘Been hard at work, have you, old man?” 
kindly inquired one of the drummers. 

"Yes, sir; the ole man has to work mighty hard 


(75) 


76 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 

to keep him an’ ole Miss an’ all dese chillern in 
bread to eat an’ clothes to w’ar; has to work 
mighty hard, sir, mighty hard.” 

“How many hours do you work during the 
day?” 

“I work twenty-four hours, sir, out of every 



“I wishes ... I could he*p de ole *oman dar some.'' 


day, an’ sometimes I wishes dar wuz two more 
hours in de day, so I could he’p de ole ’oman dar 
some.” 

“But there are only twenty-four hours in the 
day. Don’t you sleep any ?” asked one drummer, 
greatly amused. 

“O yes, sir,” said the old negro. “I sleeps a 


FINEY ON A RAMPAGE, 


77 

plenty, sir, I sleeps a plenty. I sleeps all de time 
I am not at work, sir; I sleeps a plenty.” 

“What creek is this ?” inquired the other drum- 
mer. 

“Dis ? Law, boss, don’t you know what creek 
dis is? Whar you been raised at and whar you 
live?” asked the negro in astonishment. 

“I was reared in Lebanon and I live in Nash- 
ville. I have never been here before in my life. 
Tell me the name of this creek.” 

“Why, boss, dis here creek is Piney. Piney 
Creek is de purtiest creek an’ has de cl’arest water 
an’ de fertilest Ian’ I ever see, an’ de finest folks 
you ever seed live right here on Piney. Look like 
ever’body oughter know Piney.” 

“Well,” apologetically replied one young man, 
“you see we have never been in this part of the 
country before, and know nothing of the beauties 
and advantages of this lovely place.” 

“Den you never seed Piney on a rampage, den, 
is yer ?” 

“No ; we never saw Piney except as it is now, 
sweet and cool and clear and peaceful.” 

“Well, sir, you oughter see Piney git on a 
rampage once. Den all dem purty words you jist 
now said will go out uv your mouth sho’ ; for she 
has a temper an’ she shows it sometimes, an’ she 
gits red in de face an’ den black as de ole ’oman 
dar, an’ she do damage ’fore she cools down, too.” 


78 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


Scenting a good story, one young man said : 
“Tell us about the time Piney got on a rampage 
last/’ 

“Well, hit wuz de fust day uv las’ June, an’ I 
wuz a-hoein’ dese very same ’taters in dis very 
patch, an’ wuz not a-thinkin’ ’bout a thing on 
earth. It wuz hot, it wuz sho’ hot; hot enough 
to melt de icin’ off de cake an’ fry chicken on de 
roof, an’ still a-moderatin’ hotter every minute. 
Well, sir, as I said, I wuz a-hoein’ dese ’taters 
when all ter once dar come a loud clap er thunder 
right over dar by dat bluff, an’ I look up an’ see 
a dark cloud up in de sky ’bout as^big as a acre. 
I kept on a-hoein’, an’ another clap er thunder 
louder'n the fust come, an’ I looked up an’ dat 
cloud wuz five times as big as it wuz when it 
thundered before. Den I hear a big drap er rain 
strike right in de top er dat beech tree dar, an’ 
come a-rattlin’ an’ a-patterin’ cl’ar downfthrough 
to the ground, whar it landed on a ’tater leaf an’ 
splashed all around. Den I heard two draps 
more, den I hear a dozen, an’ den it begin ter 
rain ‘like all fury all over de world. I tell you, 
sir, I never seed such a rain in all my life. Why, 
sir, fust it begin ter rain like so many cords reach- 
in’ up ter heaven ; den dese change into buggy 
whips an’ hoe handles an’ broom handles an’ 
pitchfork handles, an’ den it began ter come down 
like pick handles an’ ax handles an’ wagon spokes. 


PINEY ON A RAMPAGE, 


79 


Den dar come another clap er thunder dat most 
jarred de ole 'Oman’s last two teeth out, an’ a 
hard puff o’ wind; an’, sir, dat rain rolled itself 
up into saw logs an’ spread itself out into sheets 
an’ blankets an’ kiverin's uv rain dat flopped on 
de earth and stayed dar in layers an’ kiverin’s an’ 
piles uv water. I never seed such a sight. I 
dunno why I done it, but I turned and looked up 
Piney, an’ what you reckon I seed? Just a few 
minutes before, sir, Piney wuz as peaceful an’ 
ca’m as she is right now, sparklin’ an’ a-jumpin’ 
an’ a-playin’ right along dar, like a child dat its 
mother just bathe and put a clean dress on. Yes, 
sir, she had been a-crawlin’ lazy along, like a gray 
snake after dinner, when all at once as I look up- 
stream she fairly grew black in de face an’ come 
a-jumpin’ an’ a-prancin’ along like de Ole Scratch 
wuz in her. In two jumps she wuz over dat 
bridge, an’ she whirl an’ swirl an’ roared wid a 
deep bass tone dat sounded like all de men in de 
bad place wuz a-singin’ a song uv sorrow. She 
knocked down fences like straws an’ bore ten 
acres uv fence rails on her bosom. By an’ by 
here comes a barn a-floatin’ down, standin’ high 
outen de water, like ole Piney wuz tryin’ to 
hand it to yer. Den a house an’ some sheep come 
by. Den a whole beech tree dat had been uproot- 
ed by de root§, come a-turnin’ an’ a-twistin’ down- 
stream like hit wuz runnin’ a race fer a prize. 


8o WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

From hill to hill ole Piney spread out her black 
face, an’ never stop her eatin’ up things till every- 
thing in reach wuz gone. Den she begin ter grow 
quiet again. Dat, sir, wuz de las’ time old Piney 
git on a rampage, an’ she sho’ made her mark on 
de world. But next mornin’ she wuz as ca’m an’ 
clear an’ peaceful as she is right now. All de 
roar wuz gone an’ de anger wuz hid, an’ wave wuz 
whisperin’ to wave wid as tender a murmur as 
a turtledove ever cooed ter its mate, an’ de little 
waterfalls wuz reachin’ dar arms aroun’ de rocks 
an’ turf as lovin’ as a boy wid his fust sweet- 
heart. Yes, sir, dis is Piney. Don’t forgit dat. 
An’ dat wuz de time ole Pinev git on a rampage 
sho’.” 


OLD SHINEY, THE GIANT TROUT. 

I T was rarely any one’s good fortune to see him, 
but many came very near it at times, so it was 
said. Old Shiney was a giant trout that lived in 
the blue waters of the lazy Minnewaska River, 
near Hosale’s Mill. He was actually seen but a 
few times each season, had been hooked many 
times, but always with a disdainful flip of the tail 
had run off with hook, sinker, float, and all. As 
the years went by, Old Shiney became bolder and 
bolder, and took special delight in straightening 
out some fisherman’s No. 4 Carlisle or snapping a 
Japanese silk line like a thread of tow that had 
been touched by the fire. Many an angry ‘T’ll get 
you yet” had been hurled at him when somebody’s 
reel would suddenly start up a wild song, a steel 
rod would bend nearly double, and a line that 
had been tested up to eighteen pounds, dead lift, 
would become as taut as a steel wire — all fol- 
lowed by a sickening “snap” as Old Shiney 
would make off downstream, swelling up wave- 
lets that reached from shore to shore. 

In fact, Old Shiney had become very careless 
about himself. He had been in so many escapades 
since his career began as a tiny minnow and had 
borne such a charmed life that nothing seemed 
6 (81) 


82 


WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 



to daunt him. He would flap himself across a 
shallow shoal after a peculiarly tasty minnow, 
when not one-third of his body would be sub- 
merged. He would propel and wedge himself 
into a hole in the hank after his prey until it was 
only with the greatest difficulty that he could 


OLD SHINEY. 

extricate himself. He would follow a glistening 
carp, his favorite food, for hours until he could 
get it cornered, and with a gulp deposit it in his 
capacious stomach. He had been grabbed after, 
shot at, angled for, hunted, longed for year after 
year, but all to no avail. Not less than fifteen 
hooks had been fastened in his mouth with more 
or less line attached to each one, and some of 
these had caused Old Shiney much trouble. But 


OLD SHINEY, THE GIANT TROUT, 83 

he had learned how to do in these latter days. He 
would calmly wait until the place had festered 
and was soft, and then go deliberately to where 
some tough river moss grew, get the hook fas- 
tened in that, and gently work it out. Of course 
he knew that he was smart and strong, and 
thought he could not be taken ; and so he went on 
and on, and it seemed that his estimate of himself 
was true. 

Twice he came near meeting his fate before 
his ignominious end did come. One of these 
happened a little after daylight one quiet May 
morning while he was idly floating near some 
turbulent rapids where he hoped to secure his 
breakfast. A glistening minnow was sporting 
where the rough water began, and Old Shiney 
was just waiting for it to get far enough from 
the shallow water for him to make a rush upon 
it. Old Shiney was careless, as usual, intent on 
his prey, one keen eye watching the minnow, 
and thinking himself as sufficiently hidden from 
all observation as he was from the little fish. 
But up at the summit of a lofty clifif overhanging 
the river two other eyes were watching him with 
great intentness. To make it all the more dan- 
gerous, three little wide-opened mouths were 
pointed up to the mother eagle, and their faint 
screaming urged her downward. Her little ba- 
bies were hungry, and she must procure food for 


84 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


them. At last the proper moment came, when, 
with a dart so quick that the eye could not follow 
her, she descended to the river right upon Old 
Shiney. He saw his danger, but moved lazily. 
Was he not strong? Had he not faced this thing 
before? Besides, the minnow was almost where 
he wanted him. But the shadow of this bird was 
larger than the others. Really, he had better 
hurry to deep water. But the eagle was upon him, 
gripping around his glistening sides with talons 
as sharp and strong as Carlisle hooks, and with 
a great effort the eagle actually lifted his twelve 
pounds clear out of the water. But that eagle did 
not know Old Shiney. Other fish had been para- 
lyzed as soon as her talons had encircled them, 
and without a struggle they had been killed at 
the eagles nest and their flesh torn into shreds 
and dropped down the throats of the hungry 
eaglets. Fear and pain, however, lent energy to 
Old Shiney’s struggles, which were so great that 
one talon came loose, and then with a great flap 
of his tail the trout shook himself free and dropped 
back into deep water with a splash, followed not 
the thousandth of a second later by the eagle, in- 
tent on his recapture. All in vain, however, for in 
a minute the trout was safely hidden in the narrow 
cave between two rocks in ten feet of water where 
he made his home. 

The other narrow escape Old Shiney had was 


OLD SHINEY, THE GIANT TROUT. 85 

after Squire Munfin saw him break up a young 
fisherman’s angling outfit and go off with thirty 
feet of line, swelling waves ten inches high in 
his retreat. The Squire ordered from Chicago 
a special reel and three hundred feet of line that 
had been tested up to thirty pounds. This outfit 
cost him twenty-seven dollars. He caught a 
young carp weighing one-quarter of a pound and 
attached it to a large Carlisle hook. He embarked 
in a canoe and had a man row him gently to and 
fro a dozen times near the place where Old Shiney 
made his home. That overconfident gentleman 
saw the carp several times and wondered at the 
way it was acting; but he was not hungry that 
morning, and was lazy and sleepy. Once he start- 
ed to take it in, but closed his eyes and let. it go, 
mentally resolving that if that carp came that way 
again it would be the last of it. In ten minutes 
it was back again, going the other way. Old 
Shiney was nettled and insulted. “That fish 
wants to be swallowed, I guess,” said he, and in 
a moment he hurled himself upon it. A brief 
struggle, and down his throat went the carp. 
But that old, familiar pricking of his mouth, 
followed by the slight checking of his onward 
motion, a jerk, and Old Shiney knew that he was 
in for another fight. The old Squire let him have 
fully two hundred .feet of line before he began to 
check him. Such a song his reel never sang be- 


86 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


fore. The whizzing wheels threw off sparks of 
electric fire, and the old Squire knew, just knew 
he had him. When the reel stopped, the line grew 
slack and the fisherman began reeling in with all 
his might. Then came another jerk that snatched 
the ivory handle of the reel from the Squire’s 
hand as the fish took a new tack. Then another 
long wait with a slack line as Old Shiney swam 
as far as he could in another direction, followed 
by such another jerk as almost pulled the pole 
and all out of the fisherman’s hand. The trout 
was experiencing the hardest fight of his life. He 
was caught, and he knew it. But the battle was 
not over. An old root with rough edges, rising 
just six inches from the river bottom, caught his 
eye. With all his last remaining strength he 
made for it, got under it, scraped the line against 
it, gave it one last, despairing jerk with all his 
strength, and was free! The old Squire told a 
dozen people that Old Shiney weighed at least 
twenty pounds. 

It is now necessary to chronicle the ignominious 
end of poor Old Shiney, a hero of a hundred bat- 
tles and the gamest fish of the Minnewaska. It 
is done with genuine sadness. It happened this 
way: Judge Corlette and Colonel Themps cam.e 
to the river for a three days’ fish when the red- 
horse were on the shoal. Each had jeweled reels, 
steel rods, and fine tackle — about one hundred and 


OLD SHIKEY, THE GIANT TROUT. 87 


fifty dollars’ worth of beautiful fishing parapher- 
nalia. They fished and fished, but caught absolute- 
ly nothing. On the third day, as both were leaning 
out of the window of the mill gazing pensively at 
the other shore, they saw a plowboy on a flop- 
eared mule emerge from the undergrowth on the 
other side and make for the brink of the river for 
the mule to drink. The boy gazed with intense 
interest into the turbid waters beneath the dam, 
and, suddenly slipping off his mule, repaired to 
the bushes, from which he soon returned with a 
long hickory sprout for. a pole and a piece of an 
old trot-line with a hook at the end that would 
hold a small whale. He took a piece of bacon 
from his dinner bucket, baited the hook, and threw 
it with a splash into the river. In about ten min- 
utes there was a jerk that almost pulled the boy 
into the stream ; but without any ceremony he 
turned and ran up the bank with all his strength, 
and on the gravel of the beautiful Minnewas- 
ka, flopping in utter helplessness, soon lay Old 
Shiney. • The Judge and the Colonel saw the boy 
string him, adjust him to the hames of the mule, 
mount, and ride away. Poor old Judge! Poor 
old Colonel ! Three hundred dollars’ worth of 
tackle, three days’ hard work, and not a nibble I 
Poor Old Shiney, hero, veteran, and beauty ! A 
plowboy with three cents’ worth of tackle your 
captor! You deserved a better fate. 


THE BEGINNING OF THE BIG FLAT 
REVIVAL. 

T he proverbial, elderly inhabitant could not 
remember when things were in so distressing 
a state as they were in Big Flat at the time our 
story begins. In the first place, nearly all the fine 
old families had either died out or moved away. 
Those that had come in were of an “inferior 
breed, common and worthless,” as old Miss Susan 
Hightower described them with a curl of the lip. 
The personnel of the membership of the Big Flat 
Church had suffered in a corresponding way. 
There were not half a dozen left that cared at 
all for the Church. One-half the membership 
stayed away from church because somebody had 
said something about them or about their little 
boy or girl or old bony horse or weedy crop 
or something else. The other half came very ir- 
regularly because the house was so cold or so hot, 
or the sermon was so long and dull, or'the preach- 
er so shabby or looked ill or had a long face, or 
because no one shook hands with them and wel- 
comed them to church, or other things too nu- 
merous and ridiculous to mention, even if paper 
were ten times as cheap as it is. The boards on 
the roof of the church were old and rotten, cov- 
( 88 ) 


BEGINNING OF BIG FLAT REVIVAL. 89 


ered with moss, and leaked badly when it rained. 
Several window lights were out, and the stove 
and stovepipe were bad. On a cold day, when the 
stove was fired up a little more than usual, it 
smoked so that one wished all the lights were out ; 
and when the windows were raised to let out the 
smoke, one nearly froze to death. So between 
the cold and the smoke one wanted to be at 
home. The floor had not received any sweeping 
in a year. Weeds seven feet high grew in the 
churchyard, contesting stubbornly with the feet 
of the worshipers for the tiny path from the gate 
to the door. The fence was about one-half 
down, its prostration having begun when Jimmie 
Gilbert hitched his two-year-old colt inside the 
yard, which, taking fright one windy Sunday 
when Miss Susan’s sunbonnet blew ofif of her head 
and over on the colt’s neck, broke loose and ran 
through one corner. Up to the time of writing 
Jimmie had never repaired it, nor was a writ re- 
quiring him to do so ever served on him. 

The circuit rider — poor, dear Brother Carroll! 
— was now serving them for the third year. 
When he first came and looked the field over, he 
had an attack of heart failure, so to speak, for 
which he could not be blamed. At the beginning 
of the last year the stewards, with the most dole- 
ful prognostications of failure and many plaints 
on the heaviness of the financial burdens, cut the 


90 


WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


already insufficient and insignificant salary from 
three hundred dollars to two hundred and eighty- 
one. On the very day that prissy little Lizzie Lee 
Slebbins said that “all of Brother Carroll’s ser- 
mons were so dull and that he dressed so shabbily 
and looked so sick at the stomach and always car- 
ried around such a long face,” the preacher’s lit- 
tle boy, Vernon, was hovering between life and 
death with typhoid fever. There was not a dollar 
in the house, and the food was nearly all gone. 

Now, the philosophic historian that traced all 
the causes back to the very beginning, humanly 
speaking, in accounting for the Big Flat revival 
is positive that the tiniest drip marking the very 
headwaters of that mighty stream fell just here, 
although there were unquestionably three sources. 
Other inflowing streams in a little while increased 
the dimensions to such an extent that now, after 
twenty years, men still wonder at its force and 
reach. It was this way: Mary Haines, the .love- 
liest little girl in all the valley, came on her gentle 
pony in the afternoon to the preacher’s home to 
make kindly inquiries of the very sick child. As 
her hand was raised to knock gently on the front 
door, and before a knuckle had touched the wood^ 
she heard a sad, low voice from the sick room 
say: “Martha, do you know that if our little 
Vernon should die I would not have a decent 
shirt to wear toffiis luneral ?’’ After this sentence 


BEGINNING OF BIG FLAT REVIVAL. 91 


was spoken, Mary’s little white hand hung sus- 
pended for two full minutes before the knock was 
sounded. 

A second source was the thought that happened 
to strike Mrs. Lottie Kepler while on a visit up 
in the big city. She walked into a bookstore and 
said to the proprietor : “Our minister was so good 
to us when our little boy was ill, and spoke such 
sweet words when we buried him, that I want to 
buy him an appropriate gift.” The bookman rec- 
ommended Farrar’s “Life of Christ.” “For,” 
said he, “everybody w^nts to know about Christ. 
When a preacher preaches Jesus, the people lis- 
ten.” 

Still another source of the revival appeared 
about that time at the home of some newcomers, 
common folks, who were not members of the 
Church. The muscular, hard-working son of the 
household, eighteen years of age, said to his 
mother: “I was at the church last Sunday, and 
the dirt was half an inch deep all over the floor. 
I believe I will go down there and sweep out just 
for fun, and see what folks will say.” 


The presiding' elder was slowly making his 
way down the steep hill into the valley of the 
Big Flat two weeks after the time that our story 
began. He was on his way to a distant Quar^ 
terly Conference when he overtook two men on 


92 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


horseback and heard the following conversation 
between them: 

“You should have heard that preacher last 
Sunday morning. 1 did not aim to go to church 
that day, but I saw that young Overton Saturday 
afternoon sweeping out the church and raising a 
monstrous cloud of dust, so I decided that some- 
thing must be to play and I went. The first time 
I ever walked on that floor without hearing the 
gravel crunch under by feet was on that day. 
Such a sense of cleanliness crept over me that I 
grew rested right straight. When the preacher 
got off of his horse, I could see that something 
had happened to him, but I could not tell just 
what it was. He looked cleaner and neater and 
was better groomed. He did not seem to be apol- 
ogizing for being there or for being alive. He 
walked straight into the pulpit, gave out a hymn, 
started it himself, and everybody joined in. The 
biggest crowd was present that I ever saw there, 
for word had somehow got out all over the neigh- 
borhood that that young Overton had swept out 
the church, and that Mary Haines had raised the 
money herself and bought the preacher two nice 
shirts. The preacher took for his text, ‘Blessed is 
he, whosoever shall not be oflfended in me,’ and 
such a sermon I never heard in all my life. He 
said the trouble with many people is that they 
don’t understand the Lord and don’t try. They 


BEGINNING OF BIG FLAT REVIVAL. 93 

judge the Lord with feeble sense that cannot 
see beyond the nearest hill. They charge him 
with what he is not responsible for, make up a ver- 
dict after every adverse witness, and go off instead 
of coming to church. Then they read infidel books 
instead of the Bible, and follow Tom Paine over 
the jumping-off place. He said that if people could 
have seen Jesus stretch out his hands toward Jeru- 
salem and heard him say ‘O !’ could have seen his 
tears and caught the love in his voice, they never 
again would charge God foolishly. I tell you that 
got me. For you know I buried my wife and baby 
fourteen years ago, and I then and there lost 
faith in God and man. After that there has been 
nothing too hard for me to say, and I have been 
unhappy and wandering around in a maze ever 
since. Well, the preacher went on to say that if 
we could have seen Christ in Gethsemane praying 
all alone in the -darkness with his disciples asleep, 
if we could have seen the tears and bloody sweat 
and heard him say, Tf it be possible, let this cup 
pass from me : nevertheless, not as I will,’ it 
would break our hearts and we would never com- 
plain of our Maker again, but would renew our 
covenant, live faithfully, and meet our loved ones 
in heaven. When he said that, I could not keep 
my seat any longer. I rose up and stopped him 
and said: ^Brother, you are preaching all that 
sermon to me. I own up. I want to renew my 


94 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


covenant with God. I see it all now as I have 
never seen it before.’ Just about that time my 
heart exploded with joy, and I do not know 
what else I did until I came to myself, shaking 
hands with old McWright. You know I hadn’t 
spoken to him for twelve years, since we all 
thought he fired my barn. Yes, sir, I had old 
McWright by the hand, and he was crying and 
saying he was so glad that I had found out it 
wasn’t him ; and then the whole crowd went at it 
like a prairie fire. Six or eight men were con- 
verted right tiiere. 

“When the meeting was over that day, some 
of the boys got together and decided to come to 
the church the next day with plenty of boards 
and nails and tools and put a new roof on. Bill 
Hightower said that if they would do that he 
would take it on himself to fix the fence, and old 
Howard Calkings brought a load of hitching 
posts and set them round about the church. 
In two days they had fixed things all up around 
there so you would not know the place, and the 
meeting is still going on. They say these new 
converts, of which there have been over two hun- 
dred, don’t compare with the fine old ones that 
died; but the gospel made the others the ‘fine 
old ones’ that they were, and I guess it can 
make these fine, too. All the other Churches 
on the circuit are clamoring for their meet- 


BEGINNING OF BIG FLAT REVIVAL. 95 

ings to begin. One of the strangest things that 
happened during the meeting was when old Sol 
Epping got religion. He, together with three 
hands, stopped by the church on his way from 
cutting oats on a steep hillside. All got religion 
before they left, and, after the benediction, they 
cut all the weeds down in the yard and raked them 
outside. Then Jerry McWithers, the Irishman, 
set to and whitewashed the church and fence, and 
I don’t know to-day of a sweeter or dearer spot 
on earth than the old Big Flat Church. I tell you 
when Almighty God does begin to give he gives 
mighty quick, and he gives the best that the uni- 
verse affords.” 

Just here the three parted company. A mile 
farther on the presiding elder drove up behind 
a spring wagon loaded with a miscellaneous col- 
lection of bags and bundles. The wagon was 
driven by a stalwart, fine young fellow, and was 
preceded by the loveliest little girl in all the val- 
ley riding on a gentle pony. The face of the 
young fellow wore a continuous smile as he talked 
to her along the way, and there was more than 
an ordinary interest in her countenance as she 
turned her head now and then to reply. The 
presiding elder caught but a few words of the 
conversation, some of which were the follow- 
ing: 


96 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


'‘Won’t Brother Carroll be surprised when we 
drive up to his gate with this load of good things, 
Miss Mary?” 

“Yes, Mr. Overton; but I wish we could make 
our contribution twice as great.” 


BANDY’S BAD BREAK. 


B andy JAMES was a great man in his own 
estimation. What he did not know and 
could not do were too insignificant to mention. 
His vociferous manner of asserting his remark- 
able superiority was so overwhelming that all 
contradiction was instantly silenced. This, Bandy 
thought, was proof positive of his mental acumen ; 
whereas the truth was that others of a finer fiber 
would not descend to a discussion in which so 
much of objectionable manner and personal 
coarseness were injected. So Bandy would strut 
and boast loudly and long of the time when he 
^‘did up” so and so. He once said that he, had 
forgotten more than Willis Hunt ever knew, and 
had never forgotten anything in his life. 

But what he had done and could do were noth- 
ing to what he would have done if he had been 
there or would do if such and such things were 
to occur. The men and boys he would have 
whipped, cut, and shot under certain circum- 
stances would have almost depopulated many 
sections of the country. 

If a new house were being built in the com- 
munity, it mattered not how beautiful the plan 
or how well the work was being done. Bandy 
7 ...... ( 97 ) ^ 


98 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


had criticisms by the yard to lay tip against it. 
The roof was not shaped right, the porches were 
too wide or not wide enough, the paint colors 
did not match, the ceilings were too high, the 
lumber was not suitable, and so on. 

If a man had a new suit, he simply would not 
meet Bandy, for his remarks would surely put a 
bad taste in his mouth, and he would never like his 
suit so well afterwards. “Why do not people ask 
me about things?” he wondered. He would set 
them straight and prevent many needless errors. 
In fact, it was perfectly plain to all beholders 
that Bandy considered himself the general setter- 
to-rights man of the neighborhood, and he re- 
garded it as an indication of the purblind per- 
versity of the neighborhood that people did not 
consult him and be guided by his superior taste 
and experience. 

Now, Bandy was a chicken fancier, and made 
it perfectly plain to all listeners, far and near, that 
no other brand of feathered fowl was to be com- 
pared to the peculiar strain he raised. His 
chickens grew faster, ate less food, required less 
attention, were hardier, healthier, prettier, and in 
every sense more desirable than those of any of 
his neighbors. Right here Bandy had a lesson 
taught him that he never forgot. It also marked 
the headwater of his long and painful course of 
recovery. It was this way : Modest and diffident 


BANDY’S BAD BREAK, 


99 


little Mrs. Veil was describing to a lady friend 
in the hearing of Bandy one day a toothsome 
baked Plymouth Rock hen that had graced her 
table the day before. That gentleman broke into 
the conversation with: “Now, if that had been 
one of my Rhode Island Reds you had on your 
table, you might have had some room to talk. 
There is no chicken that compares to them in 
any sense; in fact, after eating a well-baked 
Rhode Island Red hen no one with atny taste for 
chicken at all will ever want any other kind. 
Why, do you know that if a Rhode Island Red 
and any other kind of fowl were baked just 
alike and put on a dish together, I could tell 
which was which just by eating a slice cut 
from their breasts?” All this was spoken in 
the loud, bullying tones peculiar to the said 
Bandy. 

Quite a little company had gathered around by 
this time, and heard the following proposition 
from the gentle Mrs. Veil: “Now, Bandy, I doubt 
your ability to distinguish by taste the difference 
between the fowls mentioned” — 

“I can, though, and don’t you forget it,” in- 
terrupted Bandy. 

“But, as I said, I doubt it” — 

“Well, you needn’t,” again broke in the self- 
assertive Bandy. 

“But I dp,” persisted the. little lady, “and I 


loo WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


will give you a chance to prove your assertion. 
You send me to-morrow one of your hens and I 
will furnish another. Two baked hens will be 
placed on the table, and all of you come to my 
house to dinner.” 

It was agreed and the group separated. The 
next day at noon all were assembled around Mrs, 
Veil’s hospitable board. When they were seated, 
the large china dish was brought in containing 
two fine, fat hens of equal size, done to a turn, 
steaming hot and inviting piercing fork and 
glittering blade. Around the stump of one chick- 
en’s leg there had been tied a double bowknot of 
white silk ribbon as a distinguishing mark, but 
which variety it marked of course no one knew 
but the hostess. A fragrant slice was carefully 
cut from each plump breast and passed to Bandy, 
while all the company in breathless expectancy 
awaited the result. Some thought he might dis- 
tinguish between them; others thought he might 
guess right. Most of them watched the perform- 
ance with incredulous smiles, and ate nothing 
while awaiting the verdict. 

Bandy cut a liberal mouthful from one piece, 
tasted it with a critical air, chewed it up, and 
finally swallowed it, bringing his chin hard down 
to his Adam’s apple in doing so. The people 
waited. A liberal cut was then taken from the 
other piece, and the same process was gone 


BANDY'S BAD BREAK, 


lOI 


through with. In a moment Bandy was ready 
with his decision, which, if wrong, he intended 
to bully through as at other times ; for with this 
gentleman, I am sorry to say, a falsehood well 
stuck to was as good as the truth. 

“That chicken,” said he, “which has the ribbon 
on its legs is the one I sent you, if no mistake has 
been made in informing me which piece was cut 
from it.” 

All assured him that no mistake had been 
made. 

“Are you very, very sure. Bandy, that the hen 
with the ribbon around its legs is the one you 
sent me? In fact,” continued the little Mrs. Veil, 
“if you are not perfectly sure, just take your own 
good time and be sure before you decide. Here,” 
said she to the one that carved the chicken, “cut 
Bandy some more chicken, a piece from each 
fowl,' and be sure you let him know of a certainty 
which is which.” 

It was done, and again Bandy tasted the two 
baked hens, going through the process with even 
more deliberation than before. His decision was 
unhesitatingly given as formerly. 

“You are sure. Bandy?” 

“Yes, sure ; there can be no mistake,” replied 
that gentleman. “I would know that flavor if I 
tasted it in a packing house.” 

“All right,” said the hostess. “O Tildy, Tildy,” 


102 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 

to the cook, ‘'bring that basket on the kitchen 
table/^ 

In came Tildy with Bandy’s covered basket, 
unopened and containing his Rhode Island Red 
hen, just as he had brought it, alive and well. 


THE FIGHT AT RAINBOW FALLS. 


T WO of the finest boys in the village of Salida 
were Henry Embry and Willis Hodges. 
Each just sixteen, handsome and polite, they 
were more greatly beloved than any other boys 
in the city. Henry was tall, with deep-brown 
eyes and black hair, the leader in his classes at 
school and the idol of his household. Willis was 
of a lighter complexion, with gray eyes, and the 
character -of a gentleman was stamped in every 
fiber of his being. It seemed that these two young 
fellows were made for each other, and that be- 
tween them would be that firm friendship which 
continues with manly young men through life. 
But such was not the case. They would pass 
and repass without speaking, and never had been 
known to have anything to do with each other. 
If Henry arrived on the ground first and was 
already in a game of ball, Willis would stand 
around a little while, look on with no interest, 
and then leave. If Willis was on the ground first 
and was playing, Henry would do likewise. 
They had never had an open clash, and really 
had nothing against each other, but regarded each 
other with suspicion and associated with different 
companions. Their friends were aware of this 


104 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


strange lack of friendship and the causes that 
led up to it. Their fathers had been reared to- 
gether and were once the closest friends ; in fact, 
no closer friendship had ever exisfed in Salida 
than that between Colonel Embry and Mr. 
Hodges. An unfortunate incident had separated 
them, it seemed forever, and now they had noth- 
ing whatever to do with each other. And, as is 
so frequently the case when two friends become 
estranged, it seemed that a hundred things hap- 
pened to drive them farther apart and make their 
enmity complete. They were too high-toned to 
take advantage of each other or knowingly cause 
one another trouble, yet things were constantly 
happening to produce this very thing. Somehow 
if Colonel Embry supported Squire Holcomb for 
magistrate, Mr. Hodges was for Sam Haven. 
Both learned, about the same time one morning, 
that while one had invested fifty thousand dollars 
in the Cascade Irrigation Company for the de- 
velopment of eighty thousand acres of arid land 
in the Squeeze Valley, and had befen elected Presi- 
dent of the concern, the other had invested twenty- 
five thousand dollars in the Cactus Ledge Invest- 
ment Company, a rival corporation organized for 
the same purpose, and had been elected Chairman 
of the Executive Committee. Thus it had gone on 
for years, from bad to worse ; and the enmity of 
Henry and Willis, their two sons, had been in- 


THE FIGHT AT RAINBOW FALLS. 105 

Merited entirely. It is very easy for a boy to 
inherit his father’s enrhities and prejudices. 

One day news was brought to Henry that some 
mountain lions were committing depredations 
among some sheep that his father had away back 
of Yoho Mountain, not far from Devil’s Slide;, 
where large forests of fir and clear cedar extended 
far up the mountain side. Obtaining permission 
from his father to go hunting over there, he put 
his trusted repeating rifle in good shape and, with 
two unfailing pistols and a hunting knife- buckled 
around his waist, with ample ammunition, camp 
equipage, and a Chinaman as cook and companion, 
set out for a week’s stay. They took the norths 
west trail. About nine o’clock the next morning 
they established their camp at the edge of the 
dense woods at the base of old Yoho, near where 
a plunging little mountain torrent came foaming 
and roaring down the slope, as clear as crystal 
and icy cold, from the melting snows above.'/ ’ 

Not knowing of this, Willis obtained permis- 
sion from his father to spend several days at 
Rainbow Falls, west of Yoho, hunting and fishing. 
So, in company with Ned, the faithful hired man 
of his father, he took the southwest trail around 
the mountain ; and after a day’s ride they pitched 
their tent near where the silvery spray of Rain- 
bow Falls molded globes of dew on the red and 


io6 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 



RAINBOW FALLS. 

pink mountain flowers every hour of the day and 
night. Three sparkling trout from the brook and 
a broiled young squirrel aiforded them a delight- 


THE FIGHT AT RAINBOW FALLS, loy 

ful lunch at noon, and soon enough game was in 
their cache to last a week. 

Sometime during the night Willis and Ned 
were awakened by the hideous and frightful 
screaming of half a dozen mountain lions not 
far away. The camp fire was replenished and 
guns made ready. No more sleep for them that 
night. Next morning an investigation in the 
direction of the screaming revealed the bones and 
wool of some half-devoured sheep that the beasts 
had been making merry over the night before. 
Instinctively Willis looked to the loading of his 
rifle and pistols, and walked with greater watch- 
fulness ; for these huge beasts would leap upon 
a man from the bough of a tree above his head, 
hurl him to the ground, and kill him in a flash 
with gleaming teeth and tearing paw. A little 
farther journey, and a subdued scream and some 
angry growling told him that large game was 
close by. He proceeded with the greatest caution 
and came to a spot near a huge fir tree where a 
tangled swinging vine and some young trees 
made a natural bower of observation. Into this 
he crawled to observe and listen. The growling 
and screaming continued and seemed to be coming 
nearer. Over on the right also, from the crack- 
ling of the twigs, he knew that some other animal 
was advancing from that direction. As he 
watched on the left and listened to the right two 


io8 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


lithe, tawny forms emerged from the undergrowth 
and came into full view, one with a bone and 
some torn flesh ir its mouth, the other snapping 
and snarling for a portion of it. The noise of 
approaching footsteps on the right increased, and 
suddenly, before Willis could fire on the lions, 
they had heard the sound and leaped to the 
strong limbs of the tree above his head. Two 
or three more noiseless leaps, and they had ad- 
vanced to the side whence the footsteps were 
heard and were making ready to spring upon 
the victim as soon as it appeared. Before Willis 
could draw a bead on the first lion, the hand of a 
man was advanced through the undergrowth and 
a familiar form, all unaware of any danger, 
stepped cautiously out into the little open space. 
Willis’s heart stood still as he recognized the 
newcomer as Henry Embry, all unaware of the 
death hovering fifteen feet above his head. As 
Willis glanced upward he saw both lions ready to 
spring. He drew a hasty bead upon the one near- 
est to Henry, and as he pulled the trigger both 
lions leaped like tawny shadows through the air, 
and boy and beast went down together, all mixed 
up in a struggle that was to be to the death. Wil- 
lis instantly saw that his shot had been effective 
with one beast, for it rolled, kicking and snapping, 
off to one side in the throes of death. The other, 
however, unharmed, had struck its prey true and 


I 


THE FIGHT AT RAINBOW FALLS. 109 

was recovering itself to put a quick end to the 
fight by sticking its vicious teeth into the throat 
of its victim and sucking his lifeblood away. Wil- 
lis could not fire again, the boy and beast being in 
such close proximity that to do so might mean 
death to both. So drawing his keen hunting 
knife, he fought hand-to-hand with the lion to 
the death. A fortunate plunge of the knife into 
the vitals ofi the animal ended the conflict, and 
Willis was helping the badly injured Henry to 
his feet and binding up his painful cuts and 
bruises. 

After, the many questions had been answered 
and full explanations made, the two boys set out 
for Willis’s camp, it being the nearer. After two 
hours of association together, each discovered 
that the other was just the friend he had been 
looking for. 

Henry said: “Willis, if it had not been for 
your courage and skill, I would be dead at this 
minute. I owe my very existence to you. If I 
have ever said or done one single thing to you 
that you did not like, I hope you will forgive 
me.’’ 

Willis said : “I have acted the fool long enough. 
The rest of my life will be spent in avoiding en- 
mities and making peace between men.” 

Both agreed that the next step for them to 
take was to bring their fathers back into friendly 


1 lo WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


relations, and a plan looking to this end was ear- 
nestly sought. An unusual incident solved the 
problem. A little growling and barking at the 
entrance of a cave on their way home attracted 
their attention, and on investigation they discov- 
ered two little bear cubs, hungry and calling for 
food. They fed them, took them up in their 
arms, and put out for Salida as fast as they could 
go. On their arrival they went into the back 
office of the Salida Bank and Trust Company, 
and, explaining it to the cashier, secured his assist- 
ance to their plan. Urgent notes were written 
to Colonel Embry and Mr. Hodges that two indi- 
viduals from Yoho, with strange stories to tell, 
wanted their presence in exactly fifteen minutes. 
At the end of that time the two gentlemen were 
ushered into the presence of their sons and the 
little bear cubs. The story was quickly told by 
the grateful Henry, and as the fathers grasped 
hands (the first time in twenty years) Willis said : 
“Here is a little present we have brought for you 
both. This bear we want you to have, papa, and 
his name is Bear.” 

“This one we want you to have, papa,” said 
Henry, “and his name is Forbear. With these 
two bears in any home, peace can never leave.” 


AN EFFECTIVE CURE; OR, NEARLY A 
TRAGEDY. 


T he consequences of thoughtless deeds are 
startling ; the cure of unwholesome habits is 
often tragic. Blessed is that boy who, early in 
a career of wrong, is suspended above one of the 
chasms of iniquity and measures its depths or 
receives a stinging rebuke that he cannot forget 
as a penalty for misdoing. Many men continue in 
sin in spite of common sense, warning tones, and 
terrible results, until the full sweep of the besom 
of destruction fairly lays them out, when, broken, 
sore, shamed, and bloody, they quit forever. Why 
do you suppose they wait so long? It seems to 
take the penalty of suffering in allopathic doses to 
break many away from deeds of wrong when the 
habit becomes fixed. 

Cutting White was a fine young fellow in many 
ways. When he was converted, his friends said 
that a useful career was undoubtedly open for 
him in the Church. Others said that it would 
not be long before he would return to the old 
paths; that he was weak, had run with an in- 
dulgent crowd, and had been led to regard many 
wrong and shameful things as not very bad, after 
all Among the bad things taught Cutting, was 

(III) 


1 12 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


to drink a little intoxicant now and then; and 
although he never drank to excess, still he drank 
some wine and such things occasionally. Now, 
pretty soon after this young man’s conversion he 
was called to preach — that is, he felt a thrilling 
impulse that his Heavenly Father wanted him to 
proclaim his saving truth. Brother White yielded 
instantly, and in an earnest way began prepara- 
tion for his life work. 

One day several years afterwards, together with 
his presiding elder, he was dining at the home of 
the chairman of his board of stewards. A de- 
lightful dinner had been prepared, which was dis- 
cussed most heartily from entree to dessert. By 
and by the attentive hostess came around with a 
bottle of wine and a shining glass, and pressed 
upon the presiding elder an invitation to partake. 
Me declined so kindly and yet so very firmly that 
it was unmistakable. A little nettled, the hostess 
came next to her young pastor, poured out the 
glass of wine, almost adjusted it to his lips, and 
said : "‘I know you will drink some of my wine, for 
it will do you good.” The young man declined, 
not so positively as his elder companion, however, 
and she replied: “Now, unless you drink it, I 
shall pour it down your collar.” He took the 
glass and thoughtlessly drained it down his throat. 

Now, Satan has a most wonderful way of con- 
necting things together. He takes actual trans- 


AN EFFECTIVE CURE, 


113 

gressions, public opinions, and unfortunate cir- 
cumstances, together with careless deeds and 
thoughtless words, and weaves them all togeth- 
er in a strong net to catch and hold tight the 
struggling boys and girls who, deep down in their 
hearts, never really meant to do wrong. And the 
finished warp and woof of Satan’s weaving is not 
long in showing up its product. So it was with 
Cutting. The next six months were the bitterest 
and darkest he ever spent. Friendships were 
shattered, enemies became brutal, wounds were 
made that will never heal until the judgment day, 
and the unfortunate glass of wine that the young 
man drank figured all through it — in the press, in 
the courts, in the talk of the town, and every- 
where. 

These terrible results, however, were the very 
medicine that this young man needed. The best 
school in all the world is the school of experi- 
ence, but its tuition is the costliest. In it the 
chief motto seems to be: ‘‘A cure at any price.” 
Properly to bring it about its pupils’ bodies are 
maimed, heartstrings are torn, banks are wrecked, 
health is destroyed, and fortunes are swept away. 
No man in the face of eternal verities, however, 
should ever complain at any experience that 
brings him nearer to God. 

The smoke of persecution finally cleared away, 
and we find Brother White a sad and broken- 
8 


1 14 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


hearted man, but much wiser, much stronger, and 
with finer principles than ever. 

Several years passed away. Success had at- 
tended his labors. His influence was growing. 
Public confidence in him was great. One day a 
tragic incident revealed the progress that he had 
made and the kind of stuff that was in him. In 
the course of his pastoral work he was at the 
home of some of his members at lunch time. The 
gracious invitation for him to remain to lunch 
was extended and accepted. While being enter- 
tained previous to dinner a silly girl of the house- 
hold, who at times had shown evidences of slight 
mental unbalance, conceived a romantic idea of 
“tempting the preacher,” as she expressed it to 
another guest, to see “if he were as good as he 
looked.” This girl slipped into the cellar, se- 
cured a bottle of wine, dust-covered and gar- 
nished with webs, drew the cork herself, and, 
placing bottle and glass on a tray, went unob- 
served into the parlor. Here with all the blan- 
dishments of which she was capable she began 
to urge a taste of some “sweet old wine bottled 
the year mamma was married.” Persistent, firm 
refusal — for this preacher’s hand had been suffi- 
ciently burned — did not seem to phase her. Final- 
ly, to settle the matter, the young man said: “If 
you should get a pistol and point it at my head 
and demand of me to drink, I would not ; so now 



AN EFFECTIVE CURE. 115 

please let me alone.” Instantly he saw that he 
had said the wrong thing. She set the tray with- 
in reach, left the room, and returned in a few 
moments with an old navy six-shooter as long as 
your arm, loaded with cap and ball charges. 


“Don’t kill me; I have done you no harm.” 

The brass caps were shining and the buckshot 
stared out upon him from the loaded chambers. 
She deliberately cocked the weapon, pointed it in 
deadly aim at his head, and demanded of him to 
drink. No one was near; not a single footfall 
broke upon a silence so great that both hearts 


ii6 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


could be heard in their excited throbs. A baffled 
maniac’s gleam flashed from the girl’s eye, while 
a determined look settled down upon her face. 
Her foreflnger began to twitch nervously at the 
trigger, and the deadly pallor of her face in- 
creased until it was almost brown. He saw that 
she fully intended to fire if he did not drink. The 
senseless joke had resolved itself into a deadly 
resolution in a maniac’s brain to take a human 
life. Only a moment or two elapsed, but they 
seemed an age. Time enough to die twenty times 
seemingly had passed when the young man said: 
“Put up your pistol and let me tell you why I 
will not drink, even though you should kill me. 
Drinking wine once caused me trouble that I 
would rather die than endure again. I am sure 
death could be no worse. Don’t kill me; I have 
done you no harm.” 

Fortunately just at this time an older brother 
came in, who disarmed the girl after a brief strug- 
gle, and the young minister was safe. Do you 
not think he was cured? 


t 


A TERRIBLE ACCUSATION. 


N OW and then it has happened in the experi- 
ence of ministers that they have been called 
upon to endure the fires of a terrible accusation. 
The severity of such an experience can be testi- 
fied to best by those who have passed through the 
ordeal. Such a thing changes the whole course 
of a man’s life and leaves it indelibly stamped 
mark in early gray hair, somber countenance, 
stooped shoulders, and lines furrowed deep by 
the plow of pain. If you but knew it, every look, 
expression, and habit of a person has a history 
that, if traced to its source, would be interesting 
beyond measure. 

Dear old Uncle Jeremiah Hamblin was a 
minister of the old school. He had reached the 
age of sixty years at the time our story begins, 
forty-one of which had been spent as a minister 
of the Methodist Church. He stood six feet and 
two inches in his shoes, and his mighty, deep bass 
voice could ring out to ten thousand hearers like 
a general giving orders in battle, or it could sink 
down to the plaintive tenderness of a youth plead- 
ing for constancy in his coquettish love. Never 
had a breath of evil talk marred his noble repu- 
tation. Everybody took it simply .as a matter of 

(1 17) 


1 18 WHEN DREAMS CAME TR UE, 


course that “Uncle Jere,” as he was affectionately 
called, was just as good as good could be. 

One day at a great camp meeting which this 
man of God was conducting, when the interest 
was at its highest, four young men, sons of some 
of the most prominent families of the community, 
raised quite a disturbance. They were mildly 
reproved in an impersonal way at first; but as 
this only served to make matters worse, the 
preacher called public attention to the disorder 
and said: “I have been taught never to reprove 
misbehavior in church, for those guilty are either 
idiots and irresponsible or knaves and incorri- 
gible.” The young men thereupon arose and left 
the tent in great anger, and went to their homes 
muttering threats of serious import against the 
ministry in general and the old gentleman in par- 
ticular. No opportunity for putting their threats 
into execution occurred for a full year — in fact, 
until the time the next camp meeting came. 

Owing to the extraordinary success of the pre- 
vious camp meeting in its edifying and soul- 
saving power, the services of Uncle Jeremiah 
Hamblin were again secured, and preparations 
were made for the largest crowd that ever came 
to the old Grassy Brook Camp Ground. The 
great crowds of campers were already on the 
move, and covered wagons, barouches, carts, and 
horseback riders were arriving by every path and 


A TERRIBLE ACCUSATION. 119 


byway. All were happy, eager, and expectant, 
confidently hoping that greater good would be 
done this year than ever before. 

When yet about ten miles from the camp 
ground, Rev. Jere Hamblin made the discov- 
ery that night would surely fall long before he 
reached his destination, and he decided to ask 
for lodging at the next inviting house he saw. 
He did not have long to wait, for soon over on 
his right a quiet little farmhouse, with every air 
of home and prosperity, seemed to beckon him 
in. The privilege of lodging was gladly ac- 
corded the man of God by the farmer, who, call- 
ing his grown son, commanded him to take the 
preacher’s horse, put it up, and feed it well. The 
son flashed a quick look of the utmost hatred at 
the old gentleman out of his black eyes from un- 
der his broad-brimmed hat, and as he led the tired 
horse away muttered : “Now I will get even with 
that old hypocrite if I die in the attempt.” He 
was the ringleader of the crowd of young fellows 
reproved so severely a year before. Too great a 
coward to assault the old preacher physically, and 
yet with the murky currents of his hatred run- 
ning too deeply to be satisfied by simply doing 
harm to his horse, he betook himself to bed that 
night to think up a scheme of such diabolical base- 
ness as to do credit to Satan himself. Here is the 
way it all turned out. 


120 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


The opening service of the Grassy Brook Camp 
Meeting was in the fullest swing. In the pulpit, 
with his great intoning voice penetrating to the 
remotest corner of the shelter, with his face 
aglow and his great heart on fire, stood the old 
preacher telling of a Saviour’s love and calling 
men to repentance. Behind him on the preach- 
ers’ bench sat a dozen of the finest pastors of the 
Conference, and two bishops were in attendance. 
Just as the sermon was closing, almost unobserved 
three men pressed their way in under the shelter, 
and when the benediction was pronounced made 
their way up to the pulpit. A black-eyed young 
fellow pointed out the preacher, and a thousand 
men and women were fairly paralyzed when the 
high sheriff laid a heavy hand upon the old 
preacher’s shoulder and cried: “You are my pris- 
oner in the name of the law. Consider yourself 
under arrest.” 

Never in all their history was an audience so 
completely dumfoundcd as was that one at the 
Grassy Brook Camp Ground that Wednesday 
morning. Little children screamed and good, 
brave women, who had molded bullets as their 
husbands shot them at the Indians, fainted 
away. The preachers were completely non- 
plused, and gazed in mute astonishment at the 
unparalleled scene. Uncle Jere was the first to 
recover his wits, and coolly asked: “What have 


A TERRIBLE ACCUSATION. 121 

I done that I should be held a prisoner?” The 
other ministers crowded around and repeated the 
question, “What has he done?” and, “Who has 
had him arrested?” To this the sheriff replied: 
“This young man here, Mr. Nathan Green, has 
sworn out the warrant, and charges this man with 
theft.” “Theft ?” they said, turning fiercely upon 
the young man. “Theft? What has he stolen, 
pray?” With a satanic grin Nathan replied: 
“He has stolen my pistol and my father’s watch 
and grossly insulted — but enough said ; it will all 
come out at the trial.” 

“S-t-o-l-e-n your pistol, watch, and insulted” 
— muttered the old man. “Search me and my 
saddlebags, bring up your witnesses; and if I 
have done these things, I care not to live any lon- 
ger.” The sheriff quickly turned his pockets 
wrong side out, but found nothing. The great- 
coat that he kept strapped to his saddle was 
brought, but nothing was discovered. Then his 
saddlebags were emptied, and among the meager 
belongings of a poor old traveling preacher a 
beautiful thirty-two-caliber pearl-handled revolv- 
er was found wrapped in a couple of leaves torn 
from the old man’s Bible, and a little further 
search revealed a handsome gold watch, also 
wrapped up in a leaf from the same. 

The camp meeting was broken up. Fifteen 
hundred people sadly packed^ their belongings 


122 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


and, with pained surprise and faith in God and 
man much shaken, wended their way home. For 
twenty-five miles in every direction the news was 
told. Little children heard it and wondered. 
Some of the campers died and went to heaven 
believing the old preacher a thief. Others re- 
moved in time to distant States and told the story 
with bated breath to scores of others of a thiev- 
ing preacher, scattering widely the slander where 
it could never be corrected. The old preacher 
was hustled off to trial, bound over, and bonded 
out by a few of his friends. He was suspended 
from the ministry pending his trial, and went to 
his humble home in sorrow and amazement. His 
gray hair grew grayer, his mighty form became 
bent and stooped with trouble, and the wolf came 
to the door of his house. Then he fell very ill, 
and was swept down to the very brink of the river 
before the disease could be checked. 

One day when the doctor thought there was a 
slight improvement, and before he had left the 
home for his next patient, there came a knock 
at the door which he answered himself. There 
were several men standing without: the sheriff 
and his deputy, Mr. Green, the presiding elder 
of the district, a notary public, and several prom- 
inent men. 

'Ts Brother Hamblin still alive, and can we 


A TERRIBLE ACCUSATION. 123 


see him?” asked Mr. Green. “It is a matter of 
the utmost importance.” 

“Yes,” said the doctor, “if you have business 
that is pleasant and you bring good news.” 

When all had assembled in the old sick preach- 
er’s room, Mr. Green, kneeling by the bed, said : 
“Brother Hamblin, I buried my boy yesterday. 
He had been ill six months, and came down to 
death in the greatest of mental and physical suf- 
fering. Before he died he confessed to me and 
all these gentlemen that while you were at break- 
fast the morning after you spent the night at 
my house he wrapped his pistol and my watch in 
leaves torn from your Bible and put them in your 
saddlebags because of the severe reproof you 
gave him the year before. He craved your for- 
giveness, repented of his sins, and died at peace 
with God.” 


An immense congregation greeted Rev. Jere- 
miah Hamblin at the next Grassy Brook Camp 
Meeting, which was conducted from start to fin- 
ish without an unpleasant incident, but with great 
spiritual profit to the whole country. 


A STRANGE PLACE FOR AN OVERCOAT. 


T hings have reposed in very strange and 
outlandish places before now. The story of 
the island king who threw a very beautiful and 
costly ring into the sea, only to find it again very 
soon in the stomach of a large fish, is not so 
strange, after all. The man who sings a beautiful 
song of cheer and love need exhibit no surprise 
when in after years he finds his song or its fruits 
in the heart of a friend. The dear lady who be- 
stowed that charming smile from her dimpled 
face one day need not wonder at her happy mar- 
ital joys in the after decades, or that her invest- 
ment brought that best of all returns, a loving 
husband. Have you heard of the golden bracelet 
that was found in the robin’s nest after the house- 
wife had fed the wee birds and protected them 
from their enemies? So now you want to hear 
of a certain fine young lad in the year 1870, who 
carefully and lovingly removed a very fine over- 
coat from his back in the dead of winter — a cold, 
snowy, damp winter, mind you — and put it — 
well, he put it in a place you never dreamed of a 
boy or any one else putting an overcoat in all 
your life. If a wager were consistent, the pub- 
lisher of this book would cheerfully send a copy 
of it to any one who in one hundred efforts could 
(124) 


A STRANGE PLACE. 


125 


guess the place; provided, of course, that he or 
she had never heard this account before. Well, 
here is the story. 

When the dreadful Civil War closed, a cer- 
tain family in Georgia were left in the most des- 
titute circumstances. Their negroes had been 
freed, their home burned, their stock all killed 
or driven off, their provisions all stolen, and the 
father and mother, with six little children, were 
literally face to face with starvation. Many 
did starve to death. After repeated efforts in 
several directions to make some money without 
success, the father provided himself with a few 
simple tools and went away from home to find 
work and sustenance, leaving behind the mother 
and six children, one of whom was a sickly little 
baby boy only a few months old. 

Now, all the stories in this book are true, or 
nearly so. They are true to life where the fact 
itself did not happen. But this story is very 
true. It did occur — well, almost exactly as it is 
told here, for the writer was right there, although 
not the hero. 

So great was the destitution, so widely ex- 
tended was the abject need of the people all 
around that, a few days after the father’s de- 
parture, the meal bag was shaken out and the 
last dust baked into a hoecake. This was cut 
into five pieces, one each for the larger children, 


126 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


the mother eating none, and the little sickly baby 
alternately crying and tugging at the starving 
mother’s empty breast. The next morning the 
eldest child, a sturdy American boy of thirteen, 
went out to seek work. A farmer drove by with 
a large load of fine peaches, and on hearing of 
the desperate strait of the family he agreed to 
credit the boy for a bushel at fifty cents if paid for 
on his return in the afternoon. The boy peddled 
the peaches during the day for one dollar, bought 
fifty cents’ worth of food, paid for his peaches, 
and satisfied the hunger of the starving family. 
The next day this was repeated, and the next, 
and so on until the father returned. 

The father had penetrated far into the interior 
and, being of a mechanical turn, had repaired deli- 
cate machinery and done other much-needed work, 
receiving as pay the products of the farms, large- 
ly provisions, for there was little money in the 
country. When the big wagon drove up to the 
front door and began to unload, there were four 
or five sides of smoked bacon taken out. The 
news spread like wildfire up and down the street, 
and a crowd of thirty people congregated around 
to see it. What the poor are to the poor no one 
can compute. So nice little squares of the bacon 
were cut off and handed to the starving families, 
whose mouths were fairly watering at the sight 
and delicious odor of the meat. 


A STRANGE PLACE. 


127 


Well, by and by, when this same boy was sev- 
enteen years of age, he felt bubbling up in his soul 
the ambition to become a business man; to be a 
bookkeeper and to write a nice, clear hand; to 
make something and somebody out of himself. 
No schools had been opened since the war, and 
he only knew how to read a little. About that 
time a stranger came to town and offered to 
teach boys bookkeeping, arithmetic, and penman- 
ship three months for twenty-five dollars in ad- 
vance. Now was his chance, now or never. 
Nor is this an exaggeration or in any wise untrue. 
There is a time to make investments, to get an 
education, to learn a trade. A time ! Opportu- 
nities rarely return, and when they do they often 
cannot be utilized. 

But where was he to get the money to pay his 
tuition ? There was not a cent in the family ex- 
- chequer, and there was no friend from whom a 
loan might be secured. On close reflection the 
father remembered a clothing dealer that owed 
him twenty-five dollars, and they went to him 
with many misgivings seeking payment. The 
merchant grew wroth when told their business, 
. and stormed much ; for in those days it was 
dangerous to dun certain kinds of folk. Finally, 
however, he stepped back and brought out a fine 
overcoat which he said was worth fifty dollars, 
and told them they could take it along for the 


128 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


debt or they would get nothing ; that he intended 
to make an assignment in a day or so, and this 
was their only chance to collect the debt. It is 
needless to say that they took the coat. 

It was winter, and the warmth and comfort 
imparted to the thinly clad, shivering boy were 
pleasant indeed. The coat was beautiful and 
the first of the kind ever worn by the boy, who 
felt well pleased with himself when he walked 
down the street. Then one of those strange and 
wonderful orderings of Providence took place. 
A man accosted the boy, closely examined the 
coat, and offered him twenty-five dollars in cash 
for it. His offer was accepted promptly. In an 
hour the money was in the hands of the teacher 
and the course of instruction was begun. The 
hungriest and greediest pupil that a teacher ever 
had was the thinly clad lad who came in that 
rnorning. 

Now, do you see how strange was the place 
where the lad put his overcoat? If not, I will 
tell you. He took the overcoat off of his back 
in the winter time and put it hi his head. Now 
don’t forget that — in his head! He put it inside 
his cranium, where, instead of beautifying and 
warming an ill-clad and shivering body, and in 
a year or so to be laid aside forever, it helped to 
transform a brain into a mind, sight into vision, 
an unskilled hand into a trained hand, an awk- 


A STRANGE PLACE. 


129 


ward and gawky boy into a graceful man of parts 
and accomplishments. What an investment ! 
This fellow was surely looking to the far-off 
dividends, for now after forty years the rich, 
golden coupons are being clipped from that in- 
destructible bond procured at the expense of 
privation and suffering. That boy is a great 
financier in the West now. I know what I arh 
saying, for this writer was the delicate, wizened 
baby boy. 

9 


BROTHER BAYLESS’S FIRST SERMON. 


W HEN young Brother Bayless graduated 
from the Grenada High School, he went 
before the District Conference and was licensed 
to preach. His first sermonic effort was in Cur- 
tis Chapel, a little mission church six miles out,' 
before a congregation of about thirteen people 
and two dogs. The service had not gotten well 
under way before several things of a more or less 
unexpected nature began to happen. In fact, 
there is one thing you can always count on with 
much assurance — that something will happen. 
Never are people prepared for the things that 
do happen. Before one minute had passed, the 
bell on a foraging cow near by began to make 
such a din that you could scarcely hear your 
own voice. Old Brother Newsome went out to 
drive the cow away, and succeeded partially, but 
in doing so made more noise than the cow. Just 
in the middle of the .sermon an old sow with six 
young pigs and three of four half-grown shoats, 
that had been peacefully sleeping under the 
church, were walked up by the distressful squeal- 
ing of a pig, and such a grunting and mouth- 
ing you never heard. Young Bivens went out 
to quell that row, and gathered up a handful 

(130) 


BA YLESS’S FIRST SERMON. 


131 

of stones to throw under the church, yelling out 
each time he threw a stone : “Sui !” The rocks 
would always strike a sill with a loud sound, 
doing no harm ta the swine, but convulsing the 
whole audience with laughter. 

The sermon of Brother Bavless had been wan- 
in|; steadily since the first minute and a half of 
the rather pretentious index, and during the rock; 
throwing, squealing, grunting, and “Sui!” it 
threatened to reach, a period. Another manful 
start was made, however, when these unfortunate 
interruptions had ceased, and full headway wa$ 
almost attained in a few minutes more. \ 

Now, Curtis Chapel was a summer house.'^^'A 
^uberculosispatient would have been perfectly at 
home in its fresh, 'pure oxygen day or §ghi.>?n 
it the wipd blew where it listed. At no fewer 
four places (and these were neither do%^";],i^ 
Windows^- a-^alf;growri dog could hav^ be?n 
seized , by thV taitland thrown bodily <^ry^f the 
building without coming in contact, side, etige, 
or bottom, with the walls of the house. As for 
the windows, every light had been knocked from 
each sash, attesting the skill of the bad boys in 
the neighborhood who, like ancient Benjamin, 
could sling stones at a hairbreadth and not miss. 

Will somebody please rise up and tell us why 
a neighborhood of professing Christians will 
permit a church, the building out of which come 



132 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

those influences and forces so invaluable that even 
an archangel could not calculate their worth, to 
be so mistreated ? Why do they let church proper- 
ty fall into such a ruinous state of repair and be- 
come so uncomfortable and filthy as not to be 


Curtis Chapel was a summer house. 

equal to a first-class hog pen ? What commercial 
corporation with a hundred branches and agencies 
would let the home plant go down? The young 
have no reverence for God’s house because the old 
have no love for it. 

There lived in the Curtis Chapel community 


• BAYLESS'S FIRST SERMON. 133 


a young Campbellite preacher, a fire-eating sort 
of a fellow with red hair, who from the day of 
his baptism until now had put up a valiant fight 
for his Lord with an implement closely akin to the 
one Samson used on that awful day of carnage 
among the Philistines. On the previous Sunday 
young Bayless had gone to hear this preacher. 
Rev. Mr. Dower, deliver one of his wonderful ha- 
rangues ; and on being asked by one of Dower’s 
admirers what he thought of the sermon, had been 
so foolish and impertinent as to unbosom himself 
and make all his criticism known. He had said : 
“He fusses so much I don’t know when he is not 
fussing ; he quarrels so much I don’t know when 
he is not quarreling ; he ridicules so much I don’t 
know when he is not ridiculing; and he scorns 
and defies so much I don’t know when he is not 
doing these things.” 

Of course Dower’s admirer went to that gen- 
tleman and repeated all that Bayless had said and 
more besides. So on hearing late Saturday after- 
noon that his severe critic of the previous Sun- 
day was coming to preach his first sermon in his 
neighborhood, a smile kindled around Mr. Dow- 
er’s mouth and he muttered : “Now we will have 
a little fun.” 

Dower’s plans were instantly matured. At 
seven o’clock on the same Sunday morning Mr. 
Dower mounted his horse and, dragging a new 


134 WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE. 

fox hide along the ground by a plow line, made a 
rapid circuit through the woods and around the 
old mission church and inside, up behind the 
pulpit, and on out into the dense cedar thicket 
eastward, where he lifted up his fox hide clear of 
the ground and galloped back home, not having 
been observed by a single human being. Well, 
about eleven-ten that same day he released his 
pack of foxhounds from their stall in the barn, 
where he kept them shut up, led them out to the 
trail he had made with the fox hide, blew his 
horn, and away went the hounds full tilt with 
mighty hue and cry right down toward the church, 
where Rev. Mr. Bayless was, with the most 
desperate effort, pulling himself together after 
his last interruption. The trained ears of the 
three men present to hear the sermon caught the 
baying of the foxhounds as soon as the first faint 
strains of that “music” were audible. As the 
music increased and the men had caught the 
very tones of the voices of old Bell and Bowser, 
the leaders in the race, and as they realized that 
the race was a warm one, they simply could not 
stand it any longer. So they got up and went 
out and began to look closely for the fox to come 
by. They did not see this, however; but they 
did see the whole pack run, lickety-skit, clear 
around the church, and old Bell and Bowser, 
forgetting the amenities of the situation in the 


Smelling everywhere for the fox. 



(13s) 


136 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


warmth of the race, with ear-splitting yelp and 
bay, leap into the church, followed by the whole 
pack of nine, run down the aisle, leap over the 
altar rail and back behind the pulpit, barking and 
whining and smelling everywhere for the fox 
which they thought surely was hidden in the 
church. 

Now, Brother Bayless had not been reared in 
the country, and really knew nothing about a fox 
race or foxhounds, and therefore could not pos- 
sibly appreciate this sort of thing, which has in- 
spired the magic touch of the painter, the chisel 
of the sculptor, the genius of the poet, and of- 
fered the most interesting of sport to kings, lords, 
ladies, and presidents. I say Brother Bayless was 
not educated up to the point where he could ap- 
preciate this thing and give it just the enthusiasm 
and admiration that others might have given’ it. 
When he first heard the dogs he thought they 
were chasing the cow that old Brother Newsome 
had just driven away. The association of ideas 
is a wonderful thing even in such a moment. 
But when the whole pack circled the house he 
stopped preaching. That was the only thing he 
could do, as every woman and child of the re- 
maining ten of his congregation ran to the win- 
dows and looked out. When the pack came in 
full chorus into the church and down the aisle 
and began to leap over the altar rail, Brother Bay- 


BAVLESS'S FIRST SERMON. 137 


less, with vague misgivings and strong panicky 
tendencies concerning mad-dogs, jumped upon the 
top of the pulpit and balanced himself by holding 
to the small rusty wire that supported the one 
greasy lamp overhead. The dogs, paying no 
more attention to him than if he were a stick of 
wood, completed their search of the house and, 
not finding the fox there, soon had the trail 
again, and were going through the cedar thicket 
like made, hot on the trail of the supposed fox. 

This finished the efiforts of the morning on 
Brother Bayless’s part to proclaim the gospel in 
those parts. The meeting was decidedly over. 
The congregation was already filing out, excited 
beyond measure over the fine race they had just 
witnessed. Brother Bayless slowly gathered up 
his scattered notes, inserted them in his Bible, 
said good-by to his friends, and went home to 
dinner — and to meditate alone. 


WHEN UNCLE MOSE WAS CHAL- 
LENGED. 

IR you de new ’mulgator here?” 



Rev. George Pearce Powers paused in 
his work of straightening up and arranging his 
household goods after his late move of a hun- 
dred miles to a new pastoral charge. Looking 
up, he found standing before him quite a pic- 
turesque specimen of the colored race. Tall, 
sinewy, and straight, with that unmistakable 
gentlemanly bearing that characterizes the better 
classes of his race, Moses Mayfield stood before 
the new pastor, hat in hand, with a look of in- 
terest on his intelligent face. 

“I say, is you de new ’mulgator here?” 

Now, what the negro meant by ” ’mulgator” Mr. 
Powers had not the slightest idea in the world. 
He looked at the old negro, puzzled beyond meas- 
ure, not desiring to betray any ignorance to one 
of his race on the start. To do so would be to 
lose caste and ground that could never be re- 
gained. 

“De new ’mulgator, 'mulgator. Don’t yer un- 
derstand? De ’mulgator uv de trufe as it’s writ 
in de good Book. Youse de new ’mulgator, ain’t 


“O yes,” said Mr. Powers, comprehending the 


(138) 


WHEN MOSE WAS CHALLENGED. 139 



Mayfield stood before the new pastor. 

meaning of the term. “Yes, I suppose you might 
call me that. I am the new pastor. What can I 
do for you ?” 



140 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

“Well, yer see I wants a little Vice. I done got 
myself into a little ’lemma, an’ I thought I’d come 
ter yer to help me git out. I bin shallenged fer 
a rebate by a ole Baptis’ preacher down on Harri- 
cane Crick, an’ he done rouse up de whole coun- 
try ag’in me, an’ I think I hatter ’bate wid ’im 
sho’ ef I gwine ter stay in dis here field uv labor 
any longer.” 

“How did it all come about?” asked Mr. Pow- 
ers. 

“Well, hit wuz dis way: ’Bout two weeks ago 
I wuz down ter hear ole Brudder Azariah Fuqua 
’mulgate de gospel. Dar wuz a basket dinner on 
de groun’ at Harricane Crick Baptis’ Church, 
which is a ole Baptis’ church fer de colored folks. 
I am de locust preacher in de colored Mefodis’ 
Church down ter de lower een’ uv town. Well, 
when dat ole Baptis’ nigger git up ter ’claim 
de trufe, he tuck fer his tex’ de immortal words uv 
de ’postle Paul : 'Brudderin, we air made a spec- 
tacle unto angels an’ unto men.’ An’ if yer got 
time fer ter listen, I jist would like to tell yer 
what dat ole crazy nigger done git up dar an’ 
holler out.” 

“Go ahead,” consented Rev. Mr. Powers, lay- 
ing down his work and scenting a good story 
coming. “Take a seat and tell me the whole 
story, and don’t leave anything out.” 


WHEN MOSE WAS CHALLENGED. 141 


Thus encouraged, the old negro began this most 
interesting account of the “Harricane meetin’ 
“Yer see, de reason I came fer ter go down on 
Harricane wuz dat I got a new mule, an’ sich a 
mule yer nebber have saw. I had a ole mule 
afore what wouldn’t do nothin’, so I sent ’im up 
ter Columby by my brudder Lige. Lige ain’t no 
member, so I sent ’im to Mr. Moore, de mule 
trader, and says, says ’e: ‘Mr. Moore, I fotch 
a mule here fer ter trade 'im ter yer. He ain’t 
my mule, recollect ; he’s my brudder’s mule. But 
he sent ’im ter yer by me fer ter trade ’im ter 
yer. My brudder Mose can’t trade mules, ’cause 
he is a airdained deacon in de Mefodis’ Church, 
an’ can’t trade mules.’ So upon dat dey swap, 
and Lige he bring de one he swap fer, an’ turn 
’im over ter me. He look so fine I des hatter 
hitch ’im up dat nex’ Sunday an’ dribe ’im over 
ter de old Baptis’ meetin’ on Harricane. Atter 
I git in de house ober dar, ole man Fuqua he riz 
up an’ tuck his tex’, an’ he fasten dem eyes uv 
his’n right on me, cause he knows I wuz a air- 
dained deacon in de Mefodis’ Church, an’ he 
knows also ’bout dat mule trade — dat is, dat my 
brudder Lige done eat up dat white man in de 
swap — so he fix dat eye right on me as he renounce 
his tex’. He say: ‘Brudderin, we air made a 
spectacle unto angels an’ unto men.’ But dar 
wuz noise in de house when he said it. Pinky 


142 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


Primm’s baby, hit was a-squallin', an’ ole Sister 
Susan she holler out, ‘Amen ! Bless de Lawd !’ 
at the wrong time, so he compete de tex’ ergin 
wid great emphidis : ‘Bniddcrin, as I said, we air 
made a spectacle unto angels an’ unto men !’ 

“Well, it seemed dat he said dat rite ter me, as 
I said before, like he meant me ter take it all ter 
myself, an’ nobody else. An’ I jes’ couldn’t stan’ 
it, so I riz on ’im an’ answers ’im back: ‘Well, 
Brudder Fuqua, I can’t help dat, kin I?’ He den 
turns, savage-like, full ter me, an’ he says, says ’e : 
‘Yer shaller-pate Mefodis’ tadpole yer, I wasn’t 
a-speakin’ ter yer any more’n I wuz a-speakin’ 
ter ther rest.’ An’ I says : ‘ ’Skuse me, Brudder 
Fuqua, but I thought yer wuz.’ 

‘’So he sez ergin: ‘Brudderin, we air made a 
spectacle unto angels and unto men. Now Fm 
goin’ ter preach yer a sarment short and brief, 
fer thar air two more brudderin here what wants 
ter preach afore dinner. Fust, we air made a 
spectacle. Now, we ain’t de fust ones dat wuz 
ebber made a spectacle, fer Closes he were made 
a spectacle, an’ I axed er white man jes’ t’other 
day in what did Moses’s sin consist [Aside : “I jes’ 
knowed dat ole nigger wuz a-personificatin’ uv 
me all de time, fer I wuz all de Mose dar wuz in 
de house ; fer I look all around fer ter see, an’ ev- 
erybody wuz a-lookin’ right plump at me rampag- 
inous, an’ I jes’ couldn’t hardly stan’ it no longer. 


WHEN MOSE WAS CHALLENGED. 143 

Dar wuz sho’ trouble brewin’ fer dat ole nigger”] , 
and he said it were a ack. An’ I says ter him, says 
I : 'I know dat, I know dat ; but what I wants ter 
know is, zvhich ack wuz- it?’ An’ dat white man 
ain’t nebber answered me yit. 

'‘‘Now, Ligah [Aside: “Didn’t I tell yer so? 
Dar he wuz a-bringin’ uv Lige inter it too. Dat 
preacher not know Lige, I tell yer, or he leave 
’im out sho’, fer Lige always got his razzer”], 
he ware made a spectacle when he tighten up 
his belt, an’ run f’um Jebelez fer dear life [Aside: 
“How dat ole nigger know anything ’bout dat?”] 
unto Mount Moriah, an’ as he run he fast an’ 
pray cl’ar till he git dar. But what I wants ter 
know is, why wuz Ligah a spectacle? De plain 
gospel trufe is dat none uv these kines uv spec- 
tacles is what Ise tryin’ ter git at ter-day. 
[Aside: “Den I breeve free, fer dat let us bofe 
out.”] 

“ ‘Den dar’s anudder kine uv spectacles. Dat’s 
de kine yer lay on yer nose, close up ter de eye, 
an’ what has two long pieces uv wire a-runnin’ 
back ter hoi’ ’em outer de temples. But, my brud- 
derin, dat air still not de kine uv spectacles this 
her tex’ means. 

“ ‘Den dar is dat kine uv spectacles what yer 
lays on de nose close up ter de eyes, an’ what 
has hooked wires a-runnin’ back ter de ears an’ 
aroun’ behin’ ’em fer ter hoi’ de specs on an’ 


144 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

keep ’em f’um failin’ off. But, brudderin, dat air 
still am not de kine uv spectacles what air meant 
by dis tex’, 

“ ‘Den dar is anudder kine uv spectacles, an* 
dat’s de kine, my brudderin, what pinches wid a 
spring on de bridge uv de nose an’ hoi’s dem- 
selves on dat way fer ter keep ’em f’um failin’ 
off. But,’ and he kim down wid all his might on 
de pulpit shelf, ‘still dat ain’t de kine uv spectacle, 
my brudderin, what dis here tex’ means. 

“ ‘Den dar is jes’ one more kine, one more kine, 
my brudderin, one more kine. And dat am dat 
kine what is jes’ a one-glass spectacle, what yer 
pushes in ther corner of yer eye jes’ so’ — an’ he 
done like he wuz a-gwine fer ter punch his eye 
out an’ knock his nose off — ‘a spectacle, my 
brudderin, what has jes’ one eye, jes' one eye. 
Dat’s de kine uv spectacle we ole Baptis’ is, my 
brudderin; we have jes’ one eye — a eye single ter 
de glory uv de Lawd. Yes, my brudderin, de 
eye must be single ef de whole body is ter be 
full uv light. De eye what gazes on de worl’ wid 
its vanity an’ pride we done put out, my brud- 
derin, an’ air as de one-eyed spectacle uv de 
Scripture ’bout which de mortal ’postle uv de 
Gentiles writ about.’ 

“ ’Bout dat time one uv de sisterin what bin 
'vorced f’um her husban’, she riz up an’ started 
fer ole Brudder Fuqua wid outstretched arms. 


WHEN MOSE WAS CHALLENGED. 145 

a-shoutin’ as she went. She step ober de altar 
rail, an’ Brudder Fuqua he give back. She step 
up on de step, an’ Brudder Fuqua he give back 
some more. She follow him over in de corner, 
an’ ole. Brudder Fuqua he couldn’t give back no 
more, so he wave his ban’s up an’ down jes’ like 
he fightin’ bees an’ yell at de top uv his voice: 
‘O gal, go ’way !’ An’ she sho’ went. 

“Now de trouble begin. Some er dem ole 
Baptis’ come er-pokin’ dere noses in my face 
atter dinner an’ ast me what I thought uv de 
sarment. Well, sir, I up an’ allowed, fust an 
foremost, dat it warn’t no sarment; second, dat, 
dar’fore, I couldn’t think uv it as bein’ a sarment 
when it wuz none; an’, third, dat ef I Couldn’t 
beat dat kine uv preachin’ wid one han’ tied ’hin' 
my back an’ a dog muzzle on, Fd go to hoein’ 
in de cotton an’ corn, whar all sich lazy, ignorant 
niggers oughter been when dey wuz licensed ter 
preach an’ since, too. 

“Well, dat sho’ made ’em hot, an’ dey git hot 
cl’ar up under dere collar ; an’ when yer make 
a ole Baptis’ hot, yer know what he do nex’ ? Fie 
jump right fer de water, ‘kerplunk!’ So dey 
done shallenge me fer a ’bate on de subject uv 
sprinklin’ an’ pourin’ an’ infant baptism, an I’m 
gwine ter knock ’em outen de water, too. Now, 
what I wants ter know, is dar any sprinklin’ an 
pourin’ an infant baptism u\ infants in de Bible, 
10 


146 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


an’ what is it fer, anyhow? I’ll sho’ knock ’em, 
an’ don’t yer fergit it.” 

Rev. George Pearce Powers, being busy that 
morning, simply handed the old man a half dozen 
little pamphlets, and very soon the work was 
done. 


HOW OLD EPHRAIM WAS CURED OF 
THE FITS. 

W ITHIN sixty years there has been a mighty 
change in the habits, customs, and traditions 
of every locality in the United States. Old, dom- 
inating characters have ceased to be, and the tra- 
ditions and influences of such have in a large 
measure ceased to wield any force. 

Not far from the city of Montgomery, Ala., 
you will find the rich black prairie lands out 
of which have come some of the millions of the 
wealth of that increasingly great State. Right 
in the midst of this rich black farm land lived 
old Ephraim McDonald, one of the most remark- 
able men of the State at the time written of. Old 
Ephraim had been reared a very poor orphan boy 
— had been “bound out” at the age of ten to a 
cruel old drunkard, brought up between plow 
handles with negro slaves, practicing many of 
their evils, and developing out of his rigorous 
service a resentfulness that took the form of an 
ambition to own land and slaves and make others 
work as he had worked. He was grossly igno- 
rant, and could neither read a sentence nor write 
his name. He was just as superstitious as the 
week was long. He regarded “signs,” “times 

(147) 



HOW OLD EPHRAIM WAS CURED. 149 

of the moon,” and all that, and withal was as 
highly prejudiced as one could be. At twenty- 
one he began his career with a ragged, much’- 
worn suit and eight dollars and fifty cents. At 
twenty-three he purchased ten acres of hill land 
and married a poor neighbor girl no better off in 
any way than himself. Ephraim worked and 
made money ; Liza worked and saved money. 
Everything on those gradually extending and 
widening premises was made to point to dollars. 
The plow points, the hoe edges, the blades of 
grass, the fence , corners — everything was har- 
nessed up, turned around, and made to bring in 
cash. Old Ephraim heard the jingle of coin in 
the cackling of hens, the lowing of cattle, and the 
grunting of pigs. He saw the silver in the cherry 
and peach blossoms. And when some neighbor 
woman suggested a front yard fence and a flower 
.garden, old Ephraim thundered out, “The cotton 
bloom is the prettiest flower ever grown,” and 
plowed closer to the front steps, leaving a nar- 
rower path therefrom than ever. His conquest 
never stopped. Acre after acre and farm after 
farm were added to his domain. He never owed 
a man a dollar in his life, and never promised a 
favor nor borrowed a lool or implement. When 
Ephraim was fifty years of age, he owned five 
fthousand acres- of ’the. finest ^ land iil Alabama, 
a;nd in his -“quaHers” . there were seven, hundred 


150 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


“niggers/* all his own. The acquiring of all this 
property was not easy. Ephraim was sharp and 
shrewd — never sought a trade and never lost a 
penny. He bit at no man’s hook, and therefore 
was never caught with any man s game. He had 
no political or social ambitions, and believed that 
everybody should look out for himself or die. 
He had no relatives or prominent friends, went 
on no man s bond or note, and never voted. He 
just stayed at home and worked — worked all of 
every day and far into the night. He never grew 
careless. He got the highest prices for his cat- 
tle, cotton, and feed, bought at lowest wholesale 
rates everything he had to have, which, even 
with his great household, was very little indeed. 
He made his own sugar and molasses, grew his 
own stock, had his own smiths. His “niggers” 
carded and spun his own wool and cotton, wove 
it into cloth, cut it up, and tailored it into 
suits. He raised his own bacon, vegetables, and 
seeds, and about all he purchased during the 
year were some coflfee, hardware, and such medi- 
cines as quinine, calomel, etc. His yearly cotton 
crop has been known to bring twenty-five thou- 
sand dollars, and his sugar, cattle, etc., to bring 
ten thousand dollars more. He never had a re- 
verse. 

A terrible accident when quite young gave him 
trouble all his days and finally brought the only 


HOW OLD EPHRAIM WAS CURED. 151 

outside ray of light into his life that he ever en- 
joyed. A wild young mule had suddenly turned 
on him when he was a boy and planted a hind foot 
squarely on his forehead. After months he re- 
covered his health, but periodically from that 
day on for many years he suffered from epileptic 
fits. The country doctor had tried his hand to 
the limits of patience, but never had been able 
to effect a cure. Now and then, without a mo- 
ment’s warning, he would fall face forward, beat 
his head on the ground, go several hours without 
recovering consciousness, and then be ill for a 
day or two. The severity of these attacks had 
increased through the years until at forty-eight 
they were just as bad as bad could be. 

Well, about this time one hot afternoon in 
July old Ephraim, looking out of his front win- 
dow from his bed, where he was slowly recov- 
ering from the last severe epileptic attack, saw 
a man advancing toward the house on the nar- 
row path leading up from the “big road.” The 
looks of the man were not prepossessing. He 
was tall and slim and ragged and dirty. He had 
not shaved in three or four weeks and had not 
cut his hair in six ‘months. His “Hello!” was 
answered by Eliza in person, whose kindly wom- 
an’s heart was moved by the recital of the fact 
that this stranger had walked two hundred miles, 
had had nothing to eat in two days, and was 


152 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

starving. Disregarding the protest from old 
Ephraim, she proceeded to set before the man a 
large bowl of peas, some corn bread, a “hunk” 
of boiled bacon, and two or three large onions. 
After he had eaten enough to founder two men, 
he wiped his face on his coat sleeve and ex- 
pressed very grateful and sincere thanks. 

Mrs. McDonald saw that he was young, not 
over twenty-five, and had as keen a pair of black 
eyes set in his forehead as any man she ever saw. 
Inquiries as to his place of residence and destina- 
tion elicited the fact that his last home was Tu- 
pelo, Miss., and ‘T am goin’ to Georgia, whar it 
is healthier than whar I come frum, and whar I 
been sick of fever for three months. Ef you’ll let 
me stay all night, I’ll do any work yer got, and 
I’ll never forgit yer.” 

Permission being reluctantly granted, he was 
shown an outhouse where he could sleep in 
compar^ftive comfort. When the next morning 
came, the stranger did not seem to be in a hurry 
to resume his journey toward Georgia, where it 
was so much “healthier than in Mississippi,^’ but 
was found after breakfast busying himself around 
that busy place leading a skillful and willing hand 
here and there where and when most needed. 
At dinner, with an anxious glance into the room 
where old Ephraim was still confined, he ven- 
tured to ask, “What’s the matter with the Toss ?” 


HOW OLD EPHRAIM WAS CURED. 153 

and after so long a time managed to get the whole 
truth of the case. “Why,” said he, “I can cure 
the boss of them fits. I can cure him so he need 
never have another one in his life. , My daddy 
taught me how in his life.” 

All this being repeated to old Ephraim created 
the liveliest interest imaginable. . The stranger 
was ushered into his presence and closely ques- 
tioned as to his methods, charges, time required 
for a cure, guarantee, etc., for even in so impor- 
tant a matter as this old Ephraim was not to be 
caught napping. To all inquiries, however, the 
stranger would give no information except that 
he could effect a quick, radical cure of this mal- 
ady. As to the charge, that could be easily ar- 
ranged “after you are well and sound and never 
have another fit.” “You can pay me liberal,” 
said he, “all you can spare, what you think it’s 
worth, and. I will be satisfied.” Writings were 
entered into, witnesses summoned, and the work 
commenced. 

The stranger lost no time giving his first treat- 
ment. He secured an inch-and-a-quarter auger, 
a pair of sheep shears, a billet of pine wood which 
he shaved down to a round peg, a hammer, and 
a saw. He felt the old man’s head where the 
long hair grew longest, gathered up a good-sized 
handful, and plaited it together hard and tight; 
gulling and - twisting the hair painfully all the 


154 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


while. Then he cut the bunch of hair off close to 
the scalp, and, catching it by the tip ends and bid- 
ding the old man never to take his eyes off of him, 
went through the window to the porch and down 
the step to a large oak tree in front. Here he 
bored a deep hole in the tree, carefully deposited 
the bunch of hair therein, drove the peg in with 
the hammer, sawed it off close to the tree, and 
solemnly informed the old gentleman that as long 
as that tree stood he would never have another 
fit. 

It would be next to impossible to describe the 
effect this strangely weird transaction had upon 
the household. Eliza had followed each move- 
ment of the man with wondering awe. Malinda, 
the grown daughter and only child, had not been 
ten feet away at any time, and old Ephraim, who 
had submitted to the hair-pulling and shearing 
with a dogged, martyrdom-like spirit all through, 
had raised himself up in bed and watched each 
step and motion of 'the strange incantation with 
burning^ fiery eyes. The dramatic power the 
dirty tramp had used all through was startling 
^nd convincing. He seemed to be completely at 
home, doing what he was sure would effect a 
cure, and put such deliberation into each move- 
ment as to make one think each move and step 
a necessity. 

A bountiful dinner was served that day. The 


HOW OLD EPHRAIM WAS CURED. 155 

flock of poultry was invaded, a pig was roasted, 
choice jellies and pickles from Eliza’s most pri- 
vate store were brought out, and everybody sat 
around and talked and ate and thought that 
something wonderful had happened that morn- 
ing. 

The next day old Ephraim was much better. 
Th*e sickly weak lines of his epileptic face and 
the dull, heavy look of his eyes began to change 
and a new spring came into his walk. 

The tramp was given the best room in the 
house, his hair was cut, a razor was loaned him, 
and a new suit of jeans clothes and some clean 
underwear were carried in to him ; and when he 
had shaved and bathed and dressed, no one knew 
him, the change was so startling. Two days 
more and old Ephraim had sent him twenty 
miles away on an important business errand, such 
a one as he had never before committed to other 
hands than his own. 

Old Ephraim never had another fit. Two years 
passed away and the stranger was called in to 
receive his pay for the cure. 

“How much do I owe you ?” said old Ephraim. 

“Whatever you are willing to pay,” said the 
man. 

“Name it,” said the old man. 

“You bought the McGinnis farm of a hundred 


1 56 WHEN DREAMS CAME TR UE. 


acres, a mile down the road, a year ago. Give me 
that and” — 

“What else?” said the old gentleman. 

“And — and Malinda,” stammered the man. 

He got all he asked for and more besides, 
and was faithful to the trust reposed in him; 
for he made a good husband to Malinda, a kind, 
attentive son-in-law to Eliza after the death of 
Ephraim, and a faithful trustee of immense wealth 
when the estate fell into his hands. 


WHEN THE ELDER CAME TO ROARING 
OAK. 

A Monologue. 

I T was announced about three weeks ahead 
' that on the second Saturday and Sunday the 
elder would be at McGlinty’s Cove and would 
preach at the Roaring Oak Methodist Church. 
This announcement was received with the most 
absorbing interest in every quarter. He had 
never been there before, and it had been fully 
twenty years since any presiding elder had made 
a visit to this beautiful spot, which nestled in 
between the lovely green slopes of the Cumber- 
land Mountains, the little village itself resem- 
bling a handful of pearls in an emerald chalice. 
This little mission church had been left out for 
many years before, partly because of a lack of 
working force in the Methodist ministry and 
partly because, after long cultivation, there were 
no fruits to be seen. But the year before this 
story begins it had been taken back into the cir- 
cuit, a good mission worker had been placed in 
charge, and already much good had been accom- 
plished in the community. 

So now the elder was coming — the prominent 
man of the Church who could do anything, 


158 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


whose words were great, who dressed well and 
rode in state, and who could preach the gospel as 
none other could. Yes, the elder was coming, 
and the liveliest interest was aroused whenever 
that fact was mentioned. 

Speculation was rife as to his looks, size, and 
general appearance. What would he say and do 
and how ? Who would entertain him ? What did 
he like best to eat? were a few of the questions 
propounded, but had to be left unanswered, for no 
one knew. The time passed slowly, as time al- 
ways does when an interesting event is just 
ahead, like the coming of Christmas or a wed- 
ding day. But finally the long-looked-for date 
drew nigh, and the Friday night came that the 
elder was to get off the train at Beldin s Bluff, 
thirteen miles away. Onny Odom went to meet 
him, but got there a few minutes too late, just 
after the elder had started off down the pitch- 
dark road all alone, feeling his way along as 
best he could, in imminent danger of breaking 
his neck .at every step. A glimmering light in 
a window near invited the elder in. Here he 
spent the night in a bed too short, in a room too 
small, fully conscious of some nocturnal activ- 
ities which it would be impolite to mention. The 
remainder of the story shall be told by one fully 
qualified to testify, for she was there and saw it 
all. 


WHEN THE ELDER CAME, 


159 


“Yes,” said Mrs. Susan Slimm, as she tossed 
hed red curls back from her thin, freckled face, 
“I speck I made about thirty-nine trips ter ther 
front door that Saturday mornin’ lookin’ down 
ther road toward Beldin’s Bluff ter see ef ther 
elder wuz a-comin’, and finally I allowed that he 
had fell off into Wheeler’s Pond. What say? 
Don’t yer know about Wheeler’s Pond? Why, 
that’s that pond three miles down ther road t’oth- 
er side uv Barshebie with ther boggy bottom whar 
Elder Wheeler once rid his horse in ter let him 
drink a-comin’ ter hold a quarterly meetin’ at 
this very place. Ther horse bogged up an’ Pared 
and plunged so that he throwed ther elder off 
in ther mud an’ water; an^ them wuz all the 
clothes he had. Well, I imagined that ther 'elder 
had fell in that pond erg’in, an’ so I put on my 
bonnet and went down ter Brother Cates’s, ther 
locust preacher’s shop, an’ ast him ef he had 
thought uv sich a thing. Now, Brother Cates 
is a awful smart man. He moved ter Mc- 
Glinty’s Cove about three years ago an’ opened 
up a shop, an’ somebody ast him what he could 
fix. He said he could fix anything an’ do any- 
thing an’ make anything. They said he’d starve 
thar on them terms. But he ain’t starved yet ; no, 
sir, nor he won’t starve, either. He mends wag- 
ons, fixes buggies, paints houses an’ builds chim- 
neys, lines coffins an’ buries folks, shoes horses. 


l6o WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


tans leather, sharpens plows, an’ kin doctor. He 
is a pretty good tooth dentist too, an’ kin mend 
shoes like all forties. In fact, he told ther truth 
when he said that he could do anything, for he 
kin ’most. He never wuz stumped but once. 
He ‘did everything that ever wuz ast uv him — an’ 
his price wuz always reasonable — except once, 
an’ that was when Holly Horne, ther inventor, 
tuck him that thing that wuz a combination pad- 
lock, bird cage, an’ steel trap, that’d shoot a chick- 
en thief all uv its own accord when ther hen 
roost wuz bein’ robbed. Yer see ther load got 
hung in it an’ it wouldn’t go off. He couldn’t 
git ther load out nor nothin’. Brother Cates 
tried ter fix it, but it went off, bang ! right when 
he wuz a-peepin’ in ther crack of it, an’ it 
like ter ’a’ killed old Sam’s mules on ther other 
side uv ther road. Brother Cates allowed he 
didn’t care ter fool with no sich. W ell, as I wuz 
sayin’, I put on my bonnet ter run down ter 
Brother Cates’s ter ast him ef he thought ther 
elder had tumbled into Wheeler’s Pond. An’ 
who do you suppose was thar? Nobody but old 
man Simeon Savage, jest gittin’ good an’ well 
from a bad spell of typhoid fevy. , He oughter 
been well a month before this, but abput ther 
time he wuz a-sittin’ up some he got so terrible 
hongry one day that he called Aunt Betty an’ 
allowed he was jest obliged ter have somethin’ 


WHEN THE ELDER CAME. 


i6i 


ter eat. Aunt Betty she kinder believes in feed- 
in iiv hm, so she says, AVhat yer want?’ an’ he 
says : ‘Cook me a hog’s head an’ hoecake.’ So she 
done it, an’ Mr. Savage he eat up the hog’s nose 
— that very part ther hog roots with — all by his- 
self, an’ it wuz a great big hog too, an’ that night 
he like ter ’a’ died. He sent fer ther doctor, and 
while ther doctor wuz a-comin’ Mr. Savage he 
began ter pray like all fury. He says, says he: 
‘O Lord, do help me ; help me right now. Lord. 
Hurry up about it, fer its a-goin’ ter be too late 
terrickly. Hurry up, Lord, an’ help me.’ 

“Well, as I said, thar wuz old Simeon Savage 
down thar, an’ I ast Brother Cates ef he thought 
ther elder had fell in Wheeler’s Pond, an’ old 
Mr. Savage he speaks up an’ allows, ‘No;’ and 
ef he did, he’d git out; that he wuz not like 
old Woods Scott, who wuz a powerful good 
man ter work in meetin’s after he got warmed 
up some. He said old man Scott wuz late a- 
gittin’ ter the meetin’ one year — didn’t git thar 
until Wednesday — an’ all ther preachers wuz tired 
out an’ hoarse, an’ the singing choir wuz laggin’ 
some, an’ ther altar wuz full uv mourners. An’ 
ther preacher said : ‘Brother Scott, lead us in 
pra’r. An’ all ther people knelt down a- waitin’ 
fer Brother Scott ter begin. But he jest riz up 
an’ says, says he: ‘Brother, you’ll jest have ter 
excuse me. I am sorry, but I jest don’t believe 


II 


i 62 WHEX dreams came TRUE. 


I kin cut ther mustard.’ Yes, that’s what he said, 
an’ allowed that ef ther elder should fall in 
ther pond, he could ‘cut ther mustard’ and git 
out erg’in. 

“Well, sir, would yer believe it? While I wuz 
a-standin’ thar a-talkin’ ter them men at Brother 
Cates’s shop, up druv ther elder as percumsquint 
as yer please. An’ sich a elder ! Onny Odom’s 
old rawbone horse wuz a-sweatin’ like he’d been 
druv through ther creek, an’ that great big elder 
wuz ther biggest man I ever seed. 

“Thar stood Bud Erwin, an’ he didn’t have a 
word ter say, either. Yer see Bud Erwin wuz 
ther man that said ef ther elder gave him any uv 
his sass or didn’t do ter suit him, he’d mash his 
front teeth down his throat an’ mop up ther 
road with him. Well, when he sot eyes on that 
elder, he wuz as silent as a squash an’ made no 
more noise than a feather bed does when yer 
don’t tetch it. Ner wuz that all, fer Bud he run 
aroun’ an’ gethers holt uv ther horse by ther bit 
an’ holds him fer ther elder ter git out uv ther 
buggy, although ther horse wuz that tired that 
nothin’ would ’a’ moved him but a bundle uv fod- 
der. 

“Well, sir, it wuz preachin’ time by now, an’ 
Silas he rung ther bell like ther whole town wuz 
afire. Ther school turned out an’ ther store closed 
up, an’ everybody went ter hear ther elder preach. 


WHEN THE ELDER CAME. 163 


I heard Bud say that ef ther elder wuz as big a 
preacher as he wuz a man, he would be a whopper 
sho’. 

“The onusuaj crowd a-marchin’ through town 
started all ther dogs ter barkin’ like mad, an’ 
they stampeded two young mules an’ four year- 
lin’s an’ one billy goat, which went tearin’ through 
town like Old Scratch wuz in ’em. 

“Well, when we got ter ther church, ther sing- 
in’ choir tuck their places and old Brother Cates, 
rattlin’ a pocketful uv nails, set down in ther 
amen corner. Ther elder riz up an’ gave out 
that blessed old hymn, T love thy kingdom. Lord,’ 
an’ then he tuck his text an’ went ter preachin’. 
An’ sich preachin’ ! Now, I am jest a poor, igno- 
rant woman, an’ never expect to do nothin’ else 
much but make white beds and squeeze dishrags ; 
but I guess ef I had ’a’ been a deef woman, I could 
’a’ knowed ther elder wuz a-preachin’ uv a ser- 
mon. Why, ther very fust word he spoke in his 
deep, bass tones ketched ther crowd, an’ he helt 
’em for a hour like. old Brother Cates holds a piece 
of wood in his vise. What did he say? Lord, I 
don't know a thing he did say, hardly. I know 
his text wuz from one of ther Psa’ms — something 
about my tongue stickin’ ter ther roof uv my 
mouth ef I don’t recollect Jerusalem. He said 
that Jerusalem wuz ther Church, an’ wuz ther 
most valuable thing ther world had ; that it made 


i 64 WHEX dreams CAME TRUE. 


our fathers an’ mothers ther men an’ women they 
wuz ; that Jesus founded it, an’ God loved it bet- 
ter ’cause his Son founded it than ef he’d ’a’ 
founded it hisself, as parents love, their children’s 
things better’n their own ; that we oughter love 
it ’cause it wuz our mother, an’ anybody that’d 
fergit his mother wuz all wrong; that little boys 
loved their mothers fine, but when they growed 
up they saw their faults an’ forsook ’em, an’ some 
even kicked ’em out uv ther way an’ starved an’ 
neglected them so much that they wuz about ter 
die, an’ did die in some places ; that when ther 
Church got a penny she had ter beg fer it, an’ did 
not git it until a year after she ast fer it ; that it 
wuz almost ‘over ther hills ter ther poorhouse’ fer 
ther Church in many places. An’ then he jest got 
right down ter business when all these prelimina- 
ries wuz over. As Uncle Billy Dickens said ther 
fust time he ever helt family pra’r, he could not 
end ther thing, so he prayed fer ther President an’ 
ther supreme court an’ ther Injuns an’ ther hea- 
thens, an’ still he couldn’t stop. He didn’t know 
how, so he prayed for ther horse an’ ther cow an’ 
ther chickens, an’ still he couldn’t stop. So he wuz 
about ter begin all over erg’in when old Miss Sara 
got ther broom an’ busted up ther petition, ’cause 
she smelled ther biscuits a-beginnin’ ter burn. 
An’ Unde Billy said: ‘What’s yer hurry? I jest 
wanted ter git ther preliminaries out uv ther way.’ 


WHEN THE ELDER CAME. 165 

So about this time ther elder he jest got right 
down ter business. He said that we oughter love 
the Church, because right through her doors mil- 
lions uv people had marched straight on ter glo- 
ry ; that many had crossed an’ still others wuz 
crossin’ now ; and that by her ther saints wuz 
fairly a-sweepin’ through ther gates uv ther New 
Jerusalem, an’ unborn ages would enter into her 
glorious possession uv ther same sweet heritage. 
An’ then he told how his own dear mother had 
tuck him by ther hand once an’ introduced him 
ter President Andrew Jackson, who said that ther 
Church would some day take all her bashful chil- 
dren by ther hand an’ introduce ’em ter Jesus an’ 
say: ‘These are our children, mine and thine.’ 
An’ then I don’t know nothin’ else. O, I jest 
got so happy that I riz up an’ went at it like mad, 
an’ everybody else in ther house wuz a-shoutin’ 
too, all ter once ! 

“When ther preachin’ wuz over, a whole lot 
uv ’em went up an’ ast ther elder ter go home 
with ’em, but he refused all uv ’em but me. So me 
and Jefif we tuck him an’ ther pastor home with 
us fer dinner. When we got home, ther elder said, 
says he : ‘Sister Slimm, have yer got any tea ? Fer,’ 
says he, ‘I can’t drink coffee.’ This sorter tuck 
me back, an’ I said : ‘What sorter tea yer want ? 
When my sister’s little baby wuz born, they gave 
her some ivy tea an’ ther baby some catnip tea ; 


i66 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


an’ when her little boy tuck ther stomach ache, 
they gave him some ginger tea. Which kind uv 
tea yer mean?’ ‘Why, jest ther regular sort uv 
tea,’ says he. ‘I thought maybe yer would not 
have any, so I brought some along. Please take 
this package an’ make me some.’ Well, I never 
saw no sich tea in all my life ; an’ when he tuck his 
place at ther table, I fetched it in ter him an’ says : 
‘Here, elder, is yer tea. It’s ther outswellin’est 
greens I ever saw in all my life. If yer want some 
uv ther pot liquor, I can fetch that ter yer too.’ 
But that elder never 'tetched it after I fixed it up 
so good fer him. But my ! how he could preach ! 
An’ ther next day” — 

But here the arrival of the rural mail, carrier 
spoiled the remainder of the interesting story. 


MICHAEL O’HARRITY’S TOOTHACHE. 


I T was a composite picture of deep woe that the 
face and general demeanor of Michael O’Har- 
rity presented as he appeared at the offices of 
Hebei, Elans ford & Company, where he served 
as porter. His countenance was lopsided on 
both hemispheres at once, the corners of his 
mouth were fully two inches lower than usual, 
and he walked with a very decided, though some- 
what uncertain, limp. A glance into his Irish 
gray eyes, that ordinarily twinkled with fun and 
bubbled over with wit, revealed a lack-luster con- 
dition from loss of sleep and great suffering ; and 
that general, easily discerned appearance of piti- 
fulness was patent to all. 

To Mr. Hebei’s amused question, “What on 
earth is the matter, Mike?” the following more 
or less full explanation was drawn forth, contin- 
uing from first to last with little or no inter- 
mission : 

“I wuz jist thinkin’, sor, uv swatehearts an’ 
wild flowers whin yer question reminded me viry 
forcible uv last night whin I had ther tooth- 
ache. An’ I had it viry bad, sor, viry b-a-d- -so 
bad, indade, thot ther viry remembrance uv ther 
thing sinds thim cold shivers up an’ down me 

(167) 


i68 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


spinal column — whin 1 had ther toothache so-o-o 
b-a-d thot niver a thought had 1 thot Td iver git 
well erg’in ! O-o-o ! I had it so bad thot no- 
body iver had it any worse, nor half ther bad. 
Ther viry tooth itsilf swilled oop — itself, mind 
yer — it swilled oop until it wuz twice ther big 
it iver wuz before, an’ three times ther big I hope 
it will iver be erg’in, sor. Yis, it swilled until I 
could na’ shet me mouth no more’n halfway, sor ; 
an’ when I shet it more’n halfway, sor, it filt for 
ther loife uv me loike I’d tetched a bile wid ther 
small end uv a sledge hammer, indade. An’ fer 
a little whoile I wuz skairt nigh ter death, thot I 
wuz a-goin’ to pass in me checks, an’ thin I 
wuz dead and burit wid scare, that there wuz 
na’ goin’ ter be a check at all, at all. Yis, sor, 
I had wan tooth on me left thot hoit sometimes 
whin I chawed tough beefsteak an’ cracked nuts 
on it, an’ ’specially whin I’d drink cold wather on 
it; but niver a minit did I think thot there wuz 
wan on ther right a-shapin’ oop fer a achin’ sich 
as I had last night. O-o-o! sor, it wuz both 
arfult and dreadfult, arfult and dreadf-u-l-t. 

“Yer see, sor, it wuz this way : I wuz a-sittin’ 
in me room a-watchin’ uv ther kids a-playin’ 
aroun’. Wan little spalpeen afther another wuz 
a-tumblin’ over ther other, when all uv a sudden, 
sor, before I thought or even could catch me 
breath, thot tooth gave a jerk and a jump, an’ 


MICHAEL'S TOOTHACHE. 


169 


thin it raised oop on its bin* legs an’ thin sit- 
tled down wid such a sorrowful, heartbreakin’, 
bustin’, throbbin’ ache thot I jumped almost ter 
ther ceilin’ an’ kim down in a heap on ther floor, 
a-yellin’, ‘My tooth’s druv in! My tooth's druv 
in !’ sich thot all ther family an’ neighbors kim 
a-runnin’ in loike somebody wuz kilt intoirly. 
They said : ‘What ther world’s ther matter ? 
What ther world’s ther matter ?’ An’ I said : 
‘Ther world's as sweet as a dream in June ; but me 
tooth, me tooth !’ 

“Bridget St. John she said : ‘He’s got ther tooth- 
ache, poor fellow, an’ what’ll we do ?’ An’ niver 
a wan of them spalpeens had a idee uv what ter 
do fer ther toothache. Micky O’Neal said she 
had it once when she was a little girl — fer hiv- 
in’s sake, an’ thot wuz a long time ago, so it wuz 
— an’ they cured her by puttin’ a grain uv salt in 
it. So off ther whole pack puts to find a grain 
uv salt big enough. Thin here wan comes an’ 
drops a grain in ther^ hole, an’ thin — O-o-o ! 
whin thot grain uv salt struck ther bottom, ther 
ache what wuz a-achin’ afore wuz jist a cryin’ 
baby ter ther fire bell ter what it wuz a-achin’ 
now. Betsy O’Givins she gits it out wid a splin- 
ther, an’ thot Micky O’Neal she says she believes 
thot it wuz a mistake afther all, thot it wuz na’ 
salt at all, at all ; it wuz sugar she puts in hern 
when she had it. Well, thin off ther whole gang 


170 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


scuds ter foind some sugar, an’ they fills ther 
hole oop plumb full of sugar, an’ O-o-o ! It wuz 
vvorser, siven thousand times worser instant than 
iver it wuz before since St. Patrick’s birthday till 
now. An’ I says, says I: ‘Take it out! Take it 
out ! If yer value ther loife uv a frae-borned son 
uv old Erin, ’s niver harmed a ghost or a angel, 
take it out ! An’ they wiped it out wid a rag 
an’ blowed it out wid ther bref, until ther tooth- 
ache wuz nothin’ ter all this. 

“Thin they puts ther heads together an’ ar- 
gued that coal ile ’d cure it. So they tried thot ; 
an’ ther more they tried it, ther more it didn’t. 
Thin they tried soda, and thot made it worse. 
Thin they tried camphire, but it had wan too 
miny ingredients. Thin they got some laudanum, 
but thot made it worser still. ' Thin some one 
said: ‘Sometimes cold wather will help.’ Thot 
red-headed Pinky O’Donovan said thot. So they 
brought me a dipper uv ice wather an’ tol’ me ter 
hoi’ it in ther hole an’ see if it would na’ ease 
it. An’ as I am a-standin’ here, sor, it did; but 
O-o-o Laird, Laird 1 Who’d ’a’ thought it or 
about it iver ? Thot cold wather set ther tooth on 
ther ither side uv me jaw a-achin’ fit ter kill 
Dennis McCarthy’s old mule. Yis, sor, would yer 
iver belave it ? Ther pain wint loike a flash away 
frum ther tooth thot wuz a-achin’ on ther right 
side uv me jaw ter ther tooth thot wuz na’ achin' 


MICHAELS TOOTHACHE, 


171 


on ther left. Be smashed if it did na’, sor. An’ 
ef it wuz possible fer man ter dream it or divils 
ter wail it, ther toothache on ther left side uv 
me jaw wuz about twenty times ther size an’ 
speed uv ther toothache thot had been on me 
right, so it wuz, sor. An’ as I wuz a-suflferin’ 
like a billion uv snakes, sor, I saw thot thot 
crowd uv Job’s comforters wuz about come ter 
ther last swig uv ther bottle, sor, an’ thot if I iver 
got well I’d have to raison it all out uv me own 
head an’ cure meself. So I argued thot if cold 
wather stopped wan tooth a-achin’ loike siven 
thousand, an’ started another a-achin’ loike siven- 
ty thousand, why, thin, warm wather would 
more’n likely stop ther wan a-achin’ like siventy 
thousand even if it should by some accident 
start up ther wan again thot had ached like siv- 
en thousand. I’d siven times rather have a tooth 
a-achin’ like siven thousand than ter have wan 
a-achin’ like siventy thousand. So I yelled loud 
enough ter rattle ther shingles on ther roof: 
‘Bring some hot wather ! Bring some hot wather !’ 
So here comes Mandy McCubbins wid a teakettle 
a-b’ilin' fer loife; an’ whin I belt some a little 
whoile in me mouth, Q-0-0 ! it stopped ther wan 
on ther left, but it made ther wan on ther right 
start up wid four times ther vigor of ol’ Satan’s 
sting. I rolled on ther floor, an’ ther top uv me 
head went oflf, bang! I saw eighty-siven mil- 


172 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


lion stars; I counted ivery mother’s son uv ’em. 
I died siven deaths an’ lost all uv me kinfolks. 
Me eyes turned backwards till I saw out uv ther 
back uv me head, me neck broke, me spine spun, 
me liver loped, me lights lit, an’ me melt melted. 
All me brains wuz smeared on ther ceilin’ ; an’ 
whin I could na’ stand it another minit fer ther 
loife uv St. Peter, ther doctor came. 

"They put me on a chair, two men belt me legs, 
an’ I belt ther chair. Ther doctor put thim things 
on ther tooth an’ pulled an’ pulled, but niver an 
inch would it budge. So he got another man to 
help ’im pull, an’ two more men belt me, but still 
it would na’ come. Thin he tried to give it oop 
an’ quit, but I says, says I : ‘No, sor ; no sor ! Pull ! 
Fer the loife uv yer, pull ! As long as thim things 
is on that tooth it don’t hurt wan bit. Let ’em 
stay there — pull ! pull !’ An’ so all ther way I 
got any ease or rest ther night I took ther doc- 
tor ter bed with me, an’ he kept thim things on 
thot tooth ther whole night. Whin they’d slip 
of¥, Pd wake oop; when he’d put ’em on erg’in, 
Pd go back ter sleep. Thot’s ther way I got 
through last night. But O-o-o ! what shall I do 
this night? Fer thot doctor’s drunk!” 


THE HERO OF THE WRECK. 


ERNON WINTERGATE was discouraged. 



V Try as he might, he could not help it. His 
surroundings were unpleasant, his companions 
uncongenial, his problems insoluble. His dis- 
couragement had been increasing for months, 
I'.aving begun several years before this story 
begins. A friendly observer that had been watch- 
ing events for a long time — a good woman who 
looked beneath the surface of things — said she 
did not blame Vernon at all for being down- 
hearted and deeply dejected. He was such a cap- 
able boy and so likely; he had such promise and 
possessed such powers as are rarely seen combined 
in one person. “If his opportunity would only 
present itself,” said she, “in the shape of some 
trust, calling, or pursuit that would absorb his 
tremendous energies and develop his best powers, 
what a blessing it would be just now !” 

The verdict of others was very different. “Ver- 
non is a big, strong fellow and has plenty of 
sense, but he will never amount to much. He 
is not interested in anything going on around 
him, and is absent-minded and dreamy.” Anoth- 
er said: “Vernon Wintergate is the laziest boy 
I ever saw.” A railroad man remarked one day : 


(i73> 


174 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 

“Vernon Wintergate reminds me of a mogul en- 
gine not yet on the main line — moving backward 
and forward, up and down a little unused side- 
track.” “Why does not that young Wintergate 
help his daddy in his little store or get some other 
kind of a job?” 

So it went from month to month. People 
sneered, criticized, judged with partial judgments, 
skimmed the surface of things, and delivered or- 
acles and final verdicts concerning this young 
man as the supreme court hands down its final 
decisions in cases that have been heard on both 
sides exhaustively and an opinion rendered in 
the light of all the facts. 

Is it not marvelous how the public judges? 
Knowing none of the facts and but few of the 
causes, it yet settles itself down as the court of 
final appeals in all the aflfairs of its citizens. 

The hero of this story, young Vernon Winter- 
gate, was the sixth son of ten children. His 
father and mother were average people of the 
community in which they resided. They were 
good, useful, and trustworthy. Mr. Wintergate 
was a small merchant, keeping a little store in 
which there was an attempt made to have in stock 
what any usual customer should happen to want. 
The demands of the community were not great : 
a few staple articles of any line you might think 
of were kept. There were some dry goods and 


THE HERO OF THE WRECK, 175 


groceries, some medicines and shoes, some hard- 
ware, some empty shelves, a post office, some cus- 
tomers, some credit, and some leisure. Ninety 
per cent of the goods sold was given in exchange 
for butter, eggs, and poultry. 

Betsy Hogan had just spoken to the village or- 
ganist as she was going to the store with a chick- 
en in one hand and a dozen eggs in the other to 
exchange for enough blue calico to make a dress. 

Father Wintergate had reached the zenith of 
his development and ability when Vernon was 
still a little boy. He would never be any better 
business man, father, or citizen. All the enthusi- 
asm, sentiment, and ambition of youth had long 
since evaporated, and he was just a patient, plod- 
ding man, struggling hard to make both ends 
meet — a thing both ends stubbornly refused to do. 
Now, for months it would not have surprised him 
a particle at any minute had the sheriff come up 
and demanded the keys to the store. 

Mrs. Wintergate was well mated to her slow, 
easy-going husband. She, too, had settled down 
into an unending humdrum. 

Nothing new had happened to either in fifteen 
years. The neighbors died, and they attended 
their funerals. The circuit rider came and deliv- 
ered his bimonthly exhortations, but scarcely any 
impression was made on any one’s mind except 
during the revival in midsummer and just before 


176 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

Conference, when the deacons tried to get up the 
remainder of the salary and always failed. This 
was about all there was in town. 

Poor Vernon ! A young man with a body knit 
together like a steel rope, with a clear blue eye, 
reticent, just nineteen, he was burning soul-deep 
with an ambition to be something, he did not yet 
know what. It had been several years since he 
had attended the village school ; it could now do 
no more for him. He dreamed of college and of a 
career, but lived on cabbage and corn bread. Cold 
chills chased each other up and down his spinal 
column, and his e\ es fairly blazed at the reading 
of famous football struggles. Every page of 
the eloquence of the past that he could lay hands 
on he read and reread. His father’s poor little, 
close-smelling store sickened him; his ignorant 
neighbors bored him. Everything he had ever 
tried he had failed in. He swapped horses twice, 
and was literally set afoot. He tried to farm, but 
everything dried up ; and in Deasonville there was 
nothing else to do. His sister had married a farm 
laborer who worked for two hundred dollars per 
year; a brother ran a peddling wagon and lost 
about as much as he made ; another brother was a 
cripple. What could he do? And yet those 
forces smoldered and blazed and burned, and his 
heart grew hot and throbbed with heaving emo- 
tion as he dreamed and yet dared to dream of a 


THE HERO OF THE WRECK. 177 


future containing something better than he dared 
to hope for. He wanted to go to college, but col- 
lege in his present condition was as far from him 
as the north pole. With moist eye and drawn face 
he one day exclaimed as he stretched out his good 
right arm heavenward: “I would give this strong 
right arm for four years in college.” 

And he did — almost. But I must not anticipate. 
There is but one way to make men reach — just 
one. That is to put the object of their overpow- 
ering ambitions out of reach. If crowns were 
kicked around by paupers’ feet, they would be as 
cheap and common as trash or cobblestones. 
Things esteemed the hardest to get are held the 
dearest, and fickle fate requires assiduous court- 
ships ere she surrender. 

One day the hog trader accosted Vernon in his 
rough, blunt manner about as follows: “Say, why 
don’t yer git yer a job of some sort and go ter 
work ? Up in Omaha, where I went five days ago 
to carry a carload of hogs, they need some more 
help, and will pay you a dollar and a half a day 
in the stockyards. If you’ll go. I’ll pay yer way.” 

Vernon agreed instantly, and that night his 
meager belongings were collected together and 
packed in an old valise. Good-bys were spoken 
and the twelve-o’clock express was boarded for 
the long trip West. 

Railroad travel was just new enough to Vernon 
• 12 


178 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


to be novel and interesting. He knew a great 
deal about it, however, and now proceeded to find 
out more. Every time the engineer blew the 
whistle Vernon knew the significance of it. Sta- 
tion signals, crossing signals, order signals, dan- 
ger signals, etc., were well understood. The air 
brake talked to him in a language plain and em- 
phatic. The glass-covered case to the right of the 
door of the coach, containing saw, ax, and sledge, 
he understood perfectly, and he noted the crank 
operating the emergenc}' brake in the coach. 

On the second day out he noticed that the train 
at times was running at tremendous speed. On 
inquiry he learned that it was four hours late. 
The heavy brake went on frequently as sharp 
curves were rounded and there was necessity of 
reducing the speed. Down-grades were taken at 
full speed, which grew frightful as the bottom 
was reached. The blowing of the whistle was 
constant, ear-piercing, and suggestive of dangers 
ahead. A dark, threatening night fell, with the 
premonitions of a storm. On, on through the 
intense gloom the train roared and plunged and 
hissed, spreading a pall of black smoke behind or 
shrieking like Satan in doom. 

Suddenly there came a lunge more violent than 
any before it. The whistle shrieked a blast of 
horror. The emergency brakes went on with a 
crash, a noise like a hundred cannon sounded in 


THE HERO OF THE WRECK. 179 

Vernon’s ears, the car he was riding in split into 
small fragments, the lights went out into Stygian 
gloom, death and destruction for one brief sec- 
ond held its high carnival, and then all was over. 

Immediately everything was in the wildest con- 
fusion. In the terrific crash caused by the heavy 
Pullmans in the rear telescoping the lighter cars 
in front V ernon was thrown out of the coach into 
a swampy place, with tons of wreckage all around 
him. His left arm was as useless as though he 
had none whatever, and to walk at all he had to 
lean so far to the right as almost not to walk at 
all. He did not know it at the time, being con- 
scious only of pain and weakness, but his arm 
was badly broken and three of his ribs were 
crushed. ^ 

Screams and moans called him to his senses. A 
fitful blaze began to light up the scene. Men an I 
women by the utmost endeavor were crawling 
from the wreck, bloody, naked, and mangled. The 
blaze grew higher, and Vernon saw that the 
wreckage was on fire. A poor fellow near by, 
pinned down by a small piece of wreckage, gave 
his quick wits their cue. He prized the beam off 
of him, and with his right hand dragged him 
twenty feet away. Another, held down by a beam 
that could not be moved, reminded him of the ax 
in the case. From a car not completely wrecked, 
into which he made his way, he secured the ax. 


i8o WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


and with one hand chopped through the beam 
and dragged the injured man to safety. Then he 
went inside. By sawing, cutting, and knocking 
he began the work of rescue. Two otlier crippled 
and bloody men joined him and carried out his or- 
ders like children. 

The engineer and fireman were both dead. Ev- 
ery other member of the train crew was either 
dead or so badly hurt as to be perfectly helpless. 
With one arm hanging limp and himself hardly 
able to stand, Vernon performed such prodigies 
of strength, skill, and courage as were almost in- 
credible. As the work of rescue proceeded, men 
were released only slightly hurt ; and these eager- 
ly joined in the work of rescue. Ahead the blaze 
was growing larger and was surely approaching. 
It was finishing the work left undone by the 
wreck. 

As they were going for the last time through 
the first Pullman, a low moan struck X'ernon's 
ears, followed by an infant’s cry. A section of 
the sleeper had so collapsed that it was pinning 
down its occupants into so small a compass that 
it seemed that ito one could occupy it without be- 
ing crushed to death. Wrnon’s ax immediately 
began to fall upon the partition. The flames were 
already roaring into the front end of the car. 
Blow after blow from the ax fell ; but exhaustion 
prevented him from striking twice in the same 


THE HERO OF THE WRECK. i8i 


place, and his strokes made little impression. Me 
realized that his strength was gone. Dizziness 
began to creep over him, but by a mighty effort he 
threw it off. These endangered ones must also be 
rescued at any cost. Blow after blow fell, cut 
after cut. The flames roared hotter and fiercer 
at the front end of the sleeper, and the heat was 
now unbearable. Again the woman’s moan 
sounded, again the infant’s cry. 

The partition finally gave way and was re- 
moved. A crushed and bleeding form, clasping 
an infant, was revealed. ernon, with a loud cry 
for help, seized the woman by the arm, and was 
dragging her and her baby to the door when three 
others rushed in, shielding their brows with their 
arms from the intense heat. They .quickly but 
tenderly took up the lady and her baby as V er- 
non reeled to one side and fell crying as loud as 
his last strength would permit: “Save the rest! 
Save the rest!” 

The third man, himself badly injured, dragged 
the prostrate \"ernon to the door and out among' 
the other wounded and maimed, the heroic boy 
crying as consciousness finally left him : “Let me 
alone ! Save the rest ! Save the rest !” 

In a few hours the surgeons, the nurses, and the 
wreckers had come, and the work of caring for 
the wounded and removing the debris had begun. 
In another hour the brass-trimmed “Grayhound,” 


i 82 when dreams came TRUE. 


the engine of the general manager himself, with 
his private coach, had arrived on the scene, and 
the mangled and crushed form of the lady with 
the infant that Vernon had dug out of the wreck- 
age had been tenderly lifted from the ground and 
placed in charge of the surgeons and nurses. 
Here, as soon as consciousness and memory had 
returned and cuts and bruises had been dressed, 
the lady asked for the young man that had so he- 
roically saved her from such a horrible death. 
Vernon was soon found, was carried unconscious 
to the general manager’s private car, and was 
soon safely occupying the best ward in the hos- 
pital in Omaha. 

. It was many days before Vernon opened his 
eyes ; and • when his intelligence returned, he 
did not know where he was nor what sort of a 
place he was in. The kindly face of a young 
woman was bending over him, a young woman 
dressed in pure white, with a little white cap 
crowning her head. As he started to speak, she 
laid her finger on her lips and shook her head. 
She then placed some nourishment to his lips and 
bade him go to sleep. 

The kindly voices of men speaking in low tones 
near by aroused him ; and when his wits had re- 
turned, the following is about what he heard: 
“Doctor, how is he? How is that boy getting 
along? He, and he alone, saved my wife and 


THE HERO OE THE WRECK. 183 


baby from a horrible death in that awful wreck a 
week ago. Spare no pains, no expense in caring 
for him. Union Pacific stands ready at all 

times to reward such heroism as his, and as its 
general manager I pledge the company to do all 
it can in the discharge of its debt of gratitude. 
Have you heard that that boy saved nine other 
persons besides my wife and child on that awful 
night, with one of his arms and three ribs broken ? 
This, sir, is the greatest piece of heroism I ever 
saw.” 

About six weeks after the wreck the good, pa- 
tient woman back in Deasonville, the mother of 
the young hero, received the following letter : 

Berkeley, Cal., October 2, 19 — . 
Mrs. George R. Wintergate, Deasonville, Neb. 

My Dear Mother: How strangely things have turned 
out ! Here I am at Stanford University, where I have 
hoped and yearned and longed to be since I was a little 
boy, but where I saw no earthly hope of going. Is it not 
strange that my path led here through that awful valley 
of wreck and carnage, flame and death? But I am 
here ! Boys that can come over pleasanter and safer 
roads than I had to travel should rejoice. I am well 
and studying hard, and am resolved to honor my father 
and mother in this great institution or die in the attemnt. 
With love, I am 

Sincerely your son, Vernon Wintergate. 


THAT TREASURY JOB*. 

I. 

I N a little dilapidated New Hampshire town, 
noted for its poverty, squalor, and general 
wretchedness, lived the hero and heroine of this 
sketch. They had never been very far from its 
limits, had spent nearly all their lives within its 
small bounds, and they were now well up in 
years. These persons really had a very fine opin- 
ion of themselves— thought that they were very 
brilliant and as smart as a pair of steel traps. No 
one could compare with them. They knew his- 
tory and art and language, or thought they did, 
and had a useful working knowledge of every- 
thing }'ou could mention. What the mistress of 
the little out-of-repair house did not know about 
work, economy, and shrewd domestic manage- 
ment no one knew. Never a crust of bread was 
wasted at that house ; it went into biscuit pud- 
ding. Never a meat skin ; it went into the soap 
grease. Never a bone; it went into the soup. 
Never a scrap of goods, a basting thread, nor 
hardly a raveling ; they were laid up for some fu- 
ture use. So at the time written of the lady's 
dresses had been turned and returned. Her hats 
had been made and unmade. The man’s trousers 

(184) 


THAT TREASURY JOB. 


185 


had been patched and repatched until one could 
not tell the patches from the breeches or the 
breeches from the patches. And so it had gone 
on for years. 

Now, however, another era was about to dawn 
on their fortunes, or rather their lack of fortunes. 
Their long wait had not been in vain. They were 
about to come into their own. In nothing did the 
dapper little bunch of prejudice and conceit in 
the shape of a genuine Yankee show up to great- 
er advantage than as a Federal officeholder a few 
years after the war in the old carpetbag days. 

Holding a yellow envelope in his hand, the self- 
important head of the household approached the 
front door of his home one day and remarked : 
“Maria, I am strong in the notion of accepting 
the position in Georgia the President has offered 
me.” As he uttered these words, the speaker lift- 
ed his eyes to his wife t’o catch her reply and see 
what effect the reaching of this very important 
decision would have on her. 

Ezekiel and Maria Strong, as has been inti- 
mated, were typical down-easters in every re- 
spect. Trained from the very cradle to make the 
most of things, reared with only half enough of 
anything, with shallow minds and increasing con- 
ceit, two living, breathing bundles of prejudice, 
they could not, just could not attend to their own 
business, for they had not enough of it to keep 


i86 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


them busy. Indeed, it had been intimated that 
one reason they dreaded the bad place so much 
was because there every one would have to at- 
tend to his or her own business. 

From his very youth Strong was a meddler, 
very contentious, had his own way of doing 
things, and thought his chief duty in life was to 
impress on others his own ways and methods. 
‘*'For,’' thought he, “my way is the way, and I 
don’t see why others can’t see it that way.” Like 
a certain old Quaker who once said to his son, 
“My son, all men are queer; all men are queer 
but thee and me, and thee art a little queer,” so 
what Ezekiel did not know Maria did, and the 
sum total of the knowledge of this worthy pair 
measured the available working facts of demon- 
strable certainties of the generation. 

Ezekiel Strong and Rutherford B. Hayes had 
become acquainted in some way in early youth, 
and Mr. Hayes had never been quite able to let 
Ezekiel slip out of his memory. Nor was this 
Mr. Hayes’s fault. Ezekiel Strong succeeded in 
keeping himself in Mr. Hayes’s mind throughout 
the years. As soon as Mr. Hayes (by the mys- 
terious method known only to partisan politics) 
knew that he was going to be President, Ezekiel 
put after him with all his might and main for an 
office. After a long search, a deal of measuring 
and weighing, and long-continued effort to find 


THAT TREASURY JOB. 


187 


one small enough, a little treasury job in a village 
in South Georgia carrying a salary of nine hun- 
dred dollars per annum was unearthed and offered 
to Ezekiel. 

'‘Maria, I am strong in the notion of accepting 
the position in Georgia the President has offered 
me. But there are several things in the way,” 
doubtfully mused Ezekiel. “All them Georgians 
are Democrats, and only Republicans will be saved 
in this country. Then they lynched three colored 
gentlemen down there just the other day — poor, 
harmless, mistreated fellow mortals that did noth- 
ing to deserve such a^fate. Then those Southern- 
ers are so lazy and shiftless, and spend so much 
time acting the lady and gentleman and all such 
as that, that I don’t know just what to do.” 

“O, but then I guess you know,” hurriedly spoke 
up Maria, “O, but then I guess you know that we 
can’t stand back on that or anything like it. In 
all your life you have never made but four hun- 
dred dollars a year ; and then think how much 
missionary work we can do. Why, I can teach 
the poor Georgia women how to be smart and 
industrious, to make their own clothes, to cook 
and stay at home, to raise their own chickens and 
pigs and milk and butter. And you can tell the 
men not to mistreat their poor colored neighbors 
and how to treat them and do for them. Why, 
maybe you can put down one of them awful mobs 


i88 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


and save the life of some poor colored brother, 
the nation’s ward, for whom General Grant 
fought and all but lost his precious life, and Abra- 
ham Lincoln freed, and all our noble Christian 
soldiers went down there and fought and bled and 
died” — 

“Do, Maria, shet up ! When your tongue be- 
gins to rattle, you can’t stop it and I can’t think 
vStraight. Yes, all them things is true; but sup- 
pose them Southerners should take a pop at me 
and hang me” — 

“For shame, Ezekiel Strong, for shame! As 
though the blood of Paul Revere was not a-run- 
nin’ in yer veins, and you a-seein’ of ghosts and 
hobgoblins before you ever get started down 
there !” 

“All right, Maria ; we’ll go,” quoth the Hon. 
Ezekiel Strong resignedly, with the hope of lift- 
ing the benighted Southerners out of the slough 
of laziness' and Democracy. “We’ll go; and if we 
can’t get any profit a-liftin’ them out, we’ll profit 
by them bein’ in. We'll go.” 

So ofif went the telegram, collect, that settled 
the nine-hundred-dollar job down in Georgia, as 
follows : 

Dear Mr. President: Offer received and favorably 
considered. Have decided to accept treasury position in 
Georgia. Will report there at once. Please forward all 
necessary instructions. 

[Signedl Ezekiel Strong (and Wife). 


THAT TREASURY JOB. 189 
II. 

“Well, Maria, here we are away down in Geor- 
gia after our long and tiresome trip. How do 
you like the looks of things, anyhow ?” 

“I never was so tired in all my life. Those old 
pine trees fairly wore me out. Nothin’ but pine 
trees, pine trees, pine trees everywhere — pine 
trees until I could not rest.” 

“Well, here we are at last, and my duties begin 
this morning. I will go out and take a look 
around and see how things are.” 

“Who is that long-chinned, dish-faced Yank 
that keeps sticking his nose into everybody’s 
business and meddling into everybody’s affairs?” 
asked Joe Martin in a crowd of men the next 
day. 

“That fellow says the streets need cleaning, 
the fences need whitewashing, that these hogs 
should not run at large in the street ; says every- 
body is lazy down here and trifling. Who is he, 
anyhow?” asked Bill Gray. 

“I don't know who he is, but Tom Scott and 
his wife were having a little difference of opin- 
ion this morning just as that gander-legged fel- 
low was passing by. Mrs. Tom had just secured 
the larger part of the difference by drawing first 
blood from Tom’s nose when that fellow ran in 
and got between them and said : “O, my dear peo- 


lijo WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


pie, what a sight! what a sight!’ But Tom 
reached up over the door and took down old Bet- 
sy, his seven-foot squirrel rifle, and said: ‘Here, 
you long-legged gander shanks, you ! Til give 
you just one minute to get out of sight!’ That 
fellow got; and when he was clear around the 
corner I looked at my watch, and he still had for- 
ty seconds to his credit.” 

“Why, that fellow told the preacher last Sun- 
day after service that these Southerners didn’t 
know how to worship Almighty God down here 
like they did up ‘Narth.’ Said up ‘Narth’ they 
had the flag, and the preacher never preached 
without saying something about Leencoln or 
Gr-r-ra-ant,” said another. 

“Yes, and his wife told my wife that she nev- 
er saw women wear such hats and skirts in all 
her life. And ‘La !’ said she, ‘how do you stand 
them dirty niggers in your kitchen a-doin’ of 
3'our cookin’ and lettin’ them wash your clothes 
as you do ?’ ” 

“That old chap asked me if I thought they 
would lynch any negroes around here soon, and 
I told him yes, I thought they would, as my hen 
roost was robbed just last night and Sam Hill’s 
pig was stolen last week. ‘Just as soon as we 
catch the thieves,’ said I, ‘we will make them look 
up a rope sure.’ This like to have scared him to 
death,” laughed Bob Powers. 


THAT TREASURY JOB. 


191 

“I tell you, fellows, who that fellow is. His 
name is Strong, and he is working at that little 
treasury job here the President appointed him to. 
I move that we rig things up to-day for his bene- 
fit and have a little fun at his expense,” said an- 
other. 

“All right. About two o’clock this afternoon 
will be the best time, and the courthouse will be 
the place.” 

III. 

“Mr. Strong! Is this Mr. Strong? Well, there 
is a colored gentleman up in the courthouse in a 
little trouble, and asks that you step up there a 
minute,” quoth one of the party of the morning to 
the Hon. Ezekiel Strong. 

“Wha-what’s the matter ?” stammered that gen- 
tleman. “Wha-t-t’s he been a-doin’?” 

“O, nothing much. Just wants you to witness 
his mark. That’s all, I believe ; and he is waiting 
for you now.” 

Mr. Strong turned his feet toward the court- 
house with just a little hesitation. If Maria were 
only with him ! Arriving there, he found the 
clerk’s office full of men, some standing, some sit- 
ting, some walking about, all smoking so that the 
room was dim with tobacco smoke. Near the 
clerk’s desk there stood a burly negro tied hand 
and foot, so scared as to be almost white to the 
roots of his hair. Near him were a constable and 


192 WHEX DREAMS CAME TRUE. 


a deputy sheriff, each with a big pistol in his hand, 
watching the negro like a hawk. The whole 
thing looked frightful to a degree. The solemn 
silence was broken by the sepulchral tones of the 
sheriff, saying: “Mr. Strong, this negro here is 
charged with robbing the he.n roost of Mr. Bob 
Powers and stealing a shoat from Mr. Sam Hill. 
He wants you to go on his bond .for one thousand 
dollars, and we will release him and give him his 
liberty. Will you do it ?” ^ 

Mr. Strong hesitated. Where on earth was 
Maria ? He wanted more time. He had to think 
about this proposition. 

“Come, Air. Strong. Will you go this nigger’s 
bond ?“ repeated the man. 

Still Air. Strong hesitated. The negro, more 
frightened -at the possibility of a failure here, mo- 
tioned him to bend his ear down to his lips. It 
was done, and the negro whispeied: “For de 
Lawd’s sake, Alistah Strong, do! Ef you don’t, 
dey will lynch me sho.’ just sho’. But ef you 
goes on my bawn, I kin run away and git off. 
Alassa Grant and Lincoln done done a heap more’n 
dat fer us colored folks. Please go on my bawn ! 
Dese white folks down here don’t know de nigger 
at all. Dey thinks dey do, but dey don’t. Dey got 
a back-door knowledge of de nigger ; hut de folks 
up Xorth dey got de knowledge of him accordin’ 


THAT TREASURY JOB. 


193 

ter his heart hunger. Yes, sir, you all knows us 
sho’. So please go on my bawn !” 

“What,” thought the Hon. Mr. Strong, “go on 
'this dirty rascal’s bond and let him skip out and 
leave me to pay it? Why, it would take moi:e 
than a whole year’s salary to do it !” 

“Come, what do you say?” said the magistrate. 

“O, let’s lynch the nigger and make this Yan- 
kee tie the knot around his neck!” spoke up one 
or two. “He does not care to go on his bond. 
Come on. Where is the rope ?” 

“I’ll sign ! I’ll sign 1” shrieked Strong. “O, 
vdiere is Maria ?” 

“Get it ready, then, or we will hang the whole 
outfit,” yelled a dozen men. 

The bond was produced, and with a trembling 
hand Strong signed it. Two others witnessed the 
same, and the sheriff drew his knife and began 
severing the cords, one by one, that held the ne- 
gro, so that he was now nearly free. 

At this juncture another burly countryman that 
had hitherto said nothing at all stepped to the 
front and halted the sheriff just as his knife was 
about to cut the last bond. He drew a huge pis- 
tol, pulled the hammer clear back, and leveled it 
at the officer, inquiring in a loud voice if the 
“nigger” was going to be turned loose just to 
please a Yankee officeholder. “What is this coun- 
try coming to, anyhow,” said he, “that chicken 

13 


194 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE. 

thieves and pig stealers are to be turned loose just 
because there is a Yankee here to go on his 
bond?” Then bang! went his pistol right in the 
sheriff’s face. Bang! bang! went pistols behind 
Mr. Strong. Bang! bang! went pistols on each 
side of him. Bang! bang! bang! went pistols 
all around him. Three men were down on the 
ground, and others had staggered outside. Two 
or three had hold of Mr. Strong to keep him from 
running, and then the firing ceased. 

When the smoke had cleared away, it was 
found that the sheriff had arrested the three men 
that had done the shooting and in stentorian tones 
called for order. Said he: “Judge Lynch has a 
big job on hand to-day. These three men will be 
tried, sentenced, and the sentence executed this 
very day. We must have law and order here at 
any price.” 

The dead men were rolled together in a pile, a 
sheet was spread over them, court opened, and the 
trial had begun. The first man to be tried had 
Mr. Strong as his witness. He was found guilty 
in ten minutes, his guilt being clearly proved. 
The judge arose with solemn mien, and in sepul- 
chral tones sentenced him to have his right foot 
twisted off ! 

“Horrors !” thought Strong. “They surely 
won’t do that !” 

But do that they did. Two men commissioned 


THAT TREASURY JOB. 


195 


by the judge advanced, and, tying a big stick to 
the man’s foot for a lever, began to twist the foot 
around and around until they had literally twisted 
it off. When it came in two, the two men threw 
it unceremoniously out of the window and car- 
ried the man out into the hall. “Godness ! Where 
is Maria?’' ' . 

The next prisoner was brought out and seated 
in the middle of the room. He was charged with 
murder in the first degree. In ten minutes he also 
was found guilty without mitigating circum- 
stances. In the same solemn way the judge arose 
and sentenced him to have his left arm twisted 
oflf! 

Two other men, right before the eyes of Strong, 
advanced and tied a stick to the man’s hand and 
began to twist, amid the groans and struggles of 
the guilty one. It took a dozen turns to twist it 
off ; but finally it came apart, and it also was un- 
ceremoniously thrown out of the window. This 
poor fellow was also carried out by four men. 

The last case of the afternoon was then calle 1, 
and the person was arraigned, charged with ma- 
liciously shooting down an officer of the law in the 
discharge of his duty. The verdict in this case 
was reached in fifteen minutes, and it was found 
to be an aggravated one. The judge slowly arose 
and in mournful tones sentenced this man to the 


196 WHEN DREAMS CAME TRUE, 


worst fate of all — viz., to have his head twisted 
off! 

Two men sprang forward to carry out the sen- 
tence. Two sticks were tied to his head, and the 
men began to twist. But it was too much for 
Strong. With a loud cry for Maria, he fainted 
away. 

Maria heard his call, however, for just at that 
instant her militant face appeared in the crowd. 

The show was over and the crowd was now 
dispersing. A strange thing thereupon happened. 
The sheet began to move, and the dead that were 
under it came forth. The man who had his 
foot twisted off hobbled out into the yard and, 
getting it in his hand, calmly screwed it back in 
place at the lower end of his wooden limb. The 
man who lost his arm also calmly picked it up and 
screwed it back to his shoulder. By this time the 
crowd was all gone. 

IV. 

“Well, Maria, we are back in old New Hamp- 
shire once again, I am glad to say, which is what 
I feared would never be our happy lot again. As 
for the Georgians, just let ’em go to thunder, and 
them dirty niggers too, say I. I have enough.” 


H 70 86 


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